Sister of the Wind
by Beth Nottingham
Summary: After leaving Piffle, the travelers stumble into the middle of a coup d'état, lead by the sister of the true king. Fai meets a girl who is annoying, familair, and... alright, she was attractive too... *Some spoilers,* but you may or may not notice them.
1. A Preordained Encounter

**A/N: Hi everybody! Princess Alaya D'Arc here! This story picks up directly after the group leaves Piffle world, and before they land in Lecourt. This is the world that they visit in between those two. This is my first time ever publishing something like this to the internet, so, **_**yoroshiku onegaishimasu!**_** (Please look kindly on me!) Constructive criticism and suggestions for storylines are ****most**** welcome. On another note, since I am totally new to this website, I am still "learning the language" so I'm assuming that A/N means "Authors Note" and OC means "Original Character." Please let me know if I make a slip up with the abbreviations and end up saying something totally stupid!** "(-_-)

**Other than that, I have nothing more to say, so please enjoy "Sister of the Wind!"**

_Chapter one: A Pre-ordained Encounter_

It was thundering like there was no tomorrow in the sprawling metropolis of Liaré city, in the country of Dumault; and the grey, foreboding streets seemed made of more water than asphalt. From the sky, dripping downward like a huge raindrop, the fabric of reality bent and tore and finally vanished to deposit the five inter-dimensional travelers in a dank, saturated alleyway.

"We have arrived!" sang Mokona Modoki, the round white ball of fluff that had transported them there.

"Argh! Couldn't you have landed us someplace dry, manju-bun? I'm soaked, and it hasn't been half a minute yet!" growled Kurogane as he picked himself up from the deep puddle where he had been dropped. "Get off, wizard!"

"Aww, Kuro-puu! That was mean!" wined Fai, who had just been sent sprawling into the wall of the alleyway by the ninja's unceremonious shove.

O-0-O

_Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!_

_Bare feet striking wet concrete._

O-0-O

"Blame the manju-bun for landing you on top of me." Replied Kurogane as he tried to ring out his sodden cloak.

"I'm afraid I've got to agree with Kurogane on this one," remarked Syaoran as he helped Sakura to her feet and pulled up the hood of her cloak for her. "It's awfully cold and wet in this world. We should find some shelter until this storm lets up."

"Agreed," added Fai. "We don't want princess Sakura catching cold, after all."

O-0-O

_Gasp! Gasp! Gasp!_

_Breath sobbing in a ragged throat._

O-0-O

"First of all, manju -bun," Kurogane grunted, "is there even a feather in this world? 'Cause if not, we should leave and go someplace dry."

Mokona tensed up in concentration, and then his eyes popped open and he squealed, "Mekyo! There's one here alright. It's far away though," he ended sadly. Just then, thunder crashed and lightning tore across the sky with a magnificent flash. Terrified, Sakura unthinkingly clutched Syaoran's arm and let out a faint scream. Even Mokona hid under Kurogane's cloak in fright.

O-0-O

_Gasp, slip-slither, thud, 'Aah!'_

_Falling; cry of pain. _

O-0-O

"Hyuu! That was some display of power!" exclaimed Fai. "We should hurry and find shelter, before the gods of this world decide to fry us!" The group turned to exit the alleyway, with a rather embarrassed (but also pleased) Syaoran keeping his arm around Sakura to comfort her.

O-0-O

'_Rrgh!' Splash. Tap, tap, tap, slap! Slap! Slap-slap!_

_Pulling self upright, staggering forward, running again._

O-0-O

Outside the alley, the city lay before the travelers; a sprawling, dreary grey eternity, with neither tree nor bird nor blade of grass in sight. The people who hurried along under umbrellas wore black or grey, with a flash of white here and there, carried black or grey umbrellas, and drove to and fro in black or grey or white cars. There wasn't a speck of color anywhere that the travelers could see, and dressed like they were, they stood out like red on white. Sakura shivered and rubbed her hands together. She could see her breath like little clouds in front of her mouth and nose. She wished she had been wearing something with long sleeves when she left home, or at least a shirt that covered her midriff.

"Here," offered Syaoran, taking off his gloves and sliding them onto her hands, which were quickly going numb, and pulling half of his cloak around her so that they were both covered in it. She blushed.

"Survival 101," Fai commented, saving Syaoran from further embarrassment. "If you stay close to other people, you'll be much warmer."

O-0-O

_Slosh-tap! Slosh-tap!_

_Numb feet pounding the pavement; they sound so far away!_

_Swish!_

_Pushing long hair out of eyes._

_Cough, cough, Gack! Splish, plip, plip, plip…_

_Coughing up blood, which mingles with the rain and is washed away._

O-0-O

The five, with Syaoran and Sakura sharing a cloak, and Mokona (after being tossed there by Kurogane) taking shelter in Fai's coat, made their way as inconspicuously as they could down the side-walk in search of somewhere warm and dry. This wasn't saying much of course, and plenty of people were whispering and staring, and a few even snapping pictured with their cell-phones.

"Hey Kurgy! They think you're weird!" giggled Fai, and then ducked quickly as the ninja decided he'd had enough and took a swing at his head. Turning around to walk backwards in front of the others, Fai started singing, "Kurgy is a weirdo! Kurgy is a weirdo!" it was because of this that he was a little way ahead of them when it happened.

From around the corner of the building next to them, a girl ran into sight, just in time to ram into Fai and send him sprawling to the ground on his back and then fall on top of him. Everyone froze in shock for a moment.

The first thing Kurogane noticed was her legs and feet. There was muscle there, and they were long and built for running, but her bare feet were covered in blood, as if the skin had been torn off of them, and there was a gash on her thigh. She looked like she had been running in that condition for some time.

The first thing Syaoran noticed was that she was wearing next to nothing. The only garment on her was a short-sleeved white dress that didn't even reach to the middle of her thighs. It was torn and dirty too, and covered in blood. He blushed crimson and looked down at his feet.

Sakura noticed her hair, which was a mix of brown and red and fell past her waist. Even as a wet, tangled mess, it looked so pretty.

Mokona felt powerful, and yet equally powerfully suppressed magic within her, and frowned as much as a white ball of fluff could frown, which wasn't much.

Only Fai was close enough to see her eyes. They were the most unusual shade of black-cherry he had ever seen. If he didn't know better, he would certainly have called them violet. And they were wide with pain and terror, set in a pretty face, which was nonetheless in bad shape, with scrapes and bruises matching the rest of her battered body.

The moment passed, and she leapt up to her feet, helping Fai to his in the same motion.

"I am so sorry!" she exclaimed her voice rough and cut with gasps. "That was entirely my fault; I wasn't watching where I was going." She bowed low, hair falling away to expose a pair of deep wounds on her upper back. "Please excuse me." She said, and then turned to run off.

"Wait!" cried Fai, clutching at her arm. The sudden jolt caused her to lose her balance and fall to the ground, legs bent on either side of her with her knees in front and her feet behind.

"Aak!" he ejaculated, "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to trip you up. It's just; you don't look in any condition to be out jogging in a thunderstorm." Perfectly punctuating his observation, lightning rent the sky again, and almost simultaneously, thunder crashed like the falling of mountains to a valley floor.

As if he had some kind of drug on his hands, the girl altered instantly at his touch.

"Get your hands off of me!" she snarled, and viciously struck his hand away. The violet in her eyes was darker now; they seemed almost completely black.

Fai's hand was red from the blow she had dealt it, and his face was twisted with confusion, bereft of its constant phony smile. She glared into his startled eyes with breathtaking intensity for a moment before a loud wailing, buzzing sound started up a few streets away and began moving closer. Her eyes turned violet again, and widened with fear, as she put her palms on the ground and tried to haul herself back to her feet, with no visible success. In a matter of seconds, the little group on the sidewalk was surrounded by big black automobiles with lights flashing on top and sirens wailing from within, and men in black suits with sunglasses on (despite the cloudy weather) were pouring out of them like ants from an anthill when they smell food. The bystanders who had been staring all turned and were suddenly in a very big hurry as they trotted, jogged and even sprinted away.

Out of one of the vehicles stepped a rotund man in an expensive (grey) silk suit, with an attendant holding a (grey) umbrella over him and a very wide smile on his face; so wide, in fact, that his little beady eyes were barely visible.

Kurogane, Syaoran and Fai all experienced the unpleasant rising of the hair on the backs of their necks and the dropping of their stomachs that signified imminent danger. Sakura sneezed, breaking the tension momentarily and diverting Syaoran's concentration back to her.

"You've given us quite a lot of trouble, number one-one-three-eight," observed the fat man in a silky voice that grated on Kurogane's nerves. He put a hand casually on his sword-hilt which was concealed by his cloak; for the present. The girl snarled again, this time using words which made Syaoran want to cover Sakura's ears. The fat man laughed, and Kurogane, Fai and Syaoran all felt like they were too close to nails being scratched across a chalkboard, even though the sound was innocent enough. The man's eyes, his face, his smile, his whole demeanor radiated corruption and danger.

"And who might all of you be?" the fat man addressed the travelers, looking primarily at Fai, who was in the foreground. "Dressed in such outlandish clothing, you must be from a different country."

Fai pasted his most charming smile on his face and tossed his hair out of his eyes.

"You are correct sir," he said in a voice that could have passed for polite and cheerful among less intelligent company, "We have traveled very far, and are unfamiliar with your country's ways and styles, I'm afraid. Actually, perhaps you could enlighten us? I am particularly curious about the custom of chasing beautiful, injured women in thunderstorms, ganging up on them, and calling them by a number rather than by a name." His smile was firmly in place, but his eyes and voice betrayed the tiniest hint of aggravation which, in him, amounted to uncontrollable wrath in another. Syaoran turned so that he was between Sakura (who was still under his cloak) and the black-clad men. Kurogane tensed for a fight, a wolfish grin tugging at the downturned corners of his mouth, as if begging to be released--along with his sword, of course.

The fat man's eyes became hard and icy cold; so cold that even the ninja shivered a tiny bit. He snapped his fingers and all the men around him, who had by this time formed a semi-circle around the travelers and the girl, pulled out guns.

"Syaoran, stay by the girls. Keep them safe!" shouted Fai as Kurogane dove past him and set upon the gun-men like boiling water on ice.

"It's about time we had something to do that'd keep us warm!" bellowed Kurogane as he sent his adversaries flying in all directions.

"Well you're certainly having fun!" exclaimed Fai as he, rather uncharacteristically to say the least, bashed a pair of heads together and elbowed another man in the gut.

"Who woke _him_ up?" Syaoran mused quietly, confining himself to defeating only the attackers who were close enough to pose a threat to Sakura or that unknown girl, who was still sitting on the ground, looking more than a little flummoxed.

"Are you alright?" Sakura asked the girl, kneeling down next to her. The girl glared over at her, but without any real anger, as if that was merely a habitual expression. After contemplating her for a moment, she replied, "I'll live," in a rather flat voice, and turned to observe the battle. Mokona, who had abandoned his shelter of Fai's coat for a safer one inside Sakura's cloak, jumped out and landed on the girl's lap. She started, did a double-take, and blinked a few times.

"Don't glare at Sakura! She's being nice to you!" he reprimanded her.

"Uh, what's with the talking cream-puff?" she asked, looking at Sakura and pointing at Mokona. Before Sakura had a chance to explain, they were distracted by a loud noise.

"ALAYA!" bellowed a dry tenor voice from somewhere above. Everyone stopped fighting for a moment to look up. This was a mistake.

Loud enough to drown out the next crash of thunder, a deadly hail of bullets sped into the fray from several different directions, tearing through the suited men and distracting them. Three old rusty cars with Gatling-guns mounted on the tops and gunners poking their heads out of the skylights screeched to a halt around them, and before she quite knew what was happening, Sakura was bundled into one of them next to the angry girl (with Mokona still on her lap) and when Syaoran rushed to her rescue, he was shoved in on top of her. The doors slammed, and they drove off at a break-neck pace that defied conversation with their captors/rescuers. They were all trying too hard to keep the food they had eaten in piffle-world in their stomachs where it belonged.

"Nathan, report please." Syaoran turned to see that the angry girl was sitting on the on the other side, with no seat-belt on, in a comfortable position with her hands in her lap. She looked perfectly calm, as if they weren't traveling a hundred and eight miles an hour in a rickety vehicle that looked like it was about to fall apart. Trying to ignore how much this embarrassed him, Syaoran squirmed around until he was sitting on the seat, with Sakura on his lap, and buckled the seat-belt on over both of them. For added security, he locked his arms around her waist.

'I'm not blushing, I'm not blushing,' he told himself, as if thinking it over and over would make it true. Nathan, the one who the angry girl had addressed, was to Syaoran and Sakura's point of view, a pair of legs standing on the middle seat with his torso outside the skylight. He had stopped firing the Gatling-gun a moment ago, and he now ducked down inside the car to reply.

"This, my lady, is a classic example of what is known as 'recon-mission-turns-into-rescue-mission.' We were driving around rummaging for clues as to your whereabouts, and all of a sudden, the captain started shouting, 'She's here! Turn left and head for 45th street!' and stuff like that. Thus, here we are. Nice day for it, eh your highness?" he added as yet another lightning bolt illuminated the sky with its dazzling radiance.

When, a moment later, the thunder made itself heard, Sakura, who was already traumatized, was pushed over the edge and fell unconscious. This was probably for the best, Syaoran reflected as for the next half-hour they were tossed around like dandelion seeds in a hurricane by the insane driving of whoever was behind the wheel. Even Mokona, after only a few minutes, crawled beneath Syaoran's cloak to hide.

"Tell me when it's over," he begged quietly, before his turn to pass out came. Un-fortunately, Syaoran's nerves were just strong enough to withstand the harrowing experience, so he was left fully awake to ponder the fates of Fai and Kurogane. They had left too quickly for him to see what had become of his two friends, so on top of being cold and wet and having an unconscious Sakura and Mokona both using him for a pillow and being driven somewhere he didn't know by a maniac and a perpetually angry girl who seemed to be in charge, he couldn't help but wonder if they had been brought down by numbers or hit by stray bullets or, or, or…

He wished that he too could pass out.

**A/N: So, yeah, that was chapter one! Too long? Too short? Too much action, and not enough plot? Too much plot and not enough action? Characters acting too out of character? How about description? Did I give you enough of a taste of Liaré city for you to get the flavor of it? Hit the review button below and give me a shout-out! Even just a few lines would be most helpful!**

_**Nota Benne (Latin: 'Note well') I do not own Tsubasa or any of the characters, although I do own the right to gush over how cool they are (especially Fai.)**_

_**Alaya D'Arc, Capt. Rand St. John, Liaré City and the Country of Dumault are all 100% mine. **_

_**Domo Arigatou Gozaimashita!**_** (Thank you very much!)**

**m(_ _)m - [Bow.]**


	2. Déjàvu

**A/N: Oh my gosh! I was re-reading the story from the site, and I realized that **_**half the freeking chapter was missing from the published work!**_

**Thus, this is a re-upload, which will, hopefully, make a great deal more sense!**

**Sumimasen! (I'm so sorry!) **

**m(_._)m**

_Chapter two: Déjà-vu_

Standing amid piles of dead or unconscious black-suits, Fai and Kurogane contemplated the newcomers. The other two Gatling-guns had stopped firing, and the five passengers from the cars who had joined in the last moments of the battle were grouped together a little ways off, speaking to each other in low voices. A sixth man, who had jumped down from the roof of a nearby building and finished off most of the enemy gun-men single-handedly strode over to the two travelers and held out his hand.

"I'm Rand St. John, and it's nice to meet you," he said. It was his voice which had shouted 'Alaya,' and then he had come down like a destroying angel to raze his foes. Kurogane took his hand and shook it once, firmly. They had known each other for under thirty seconds, and yet he already knew he liked the man.

"My name is Kurogane. The blonde is Fai D Flourite. Care to tell us what you've done with our companions?"

"The boy and the girl were taken to one of our hideouts," came another voice, this one from the group of people by the cars. "They—and you two—tried gallantly to protect our princess." The speaker continued, coming forward and into better view. Not surprisingly, it was Sorata Arisugawa, an old friend of theirs. "They will not be harmed unless they try something really, really stupid."

"Princess?" Fai observed, "Then that girl with the long hair was a princess, eh? Hyuu! Nice. But if you don't mind me saying so, she's got a bit of a temper about her, doesn't she?" all six of the people from the cars laughed.

"No kidding! It seems that ever since Alphonse died, Alaya's been channeling his spirit or something." Arashi chimed in as she opened the door of one of the cars and gestured for them to climb inside.

"Alphonse?" Fai asked as Rand and Kurogane slid in before him.

"Her twin brother," explained Sorata as he climbed into the passenger seat. "He's been missing in action for nearly three months now."

"He's dead." Arashi said flatly, with the air of having said this many, many times before. She closed the door of the driver's side a little more forcefully than was necessary. Fai squished wordlessly in next to Kurogane, closed the door, and was un-naturally quiet throughout the trip. They drove for nearly an hour, navigating carefully through crowded streets and over high bridges, making a quick stop to stow the gun in the basement of a tall building and close the skylight. Also, Fai and Kurogane switched seats; having the biggest man in the middle seat wasn't the wisest arrangement. Kurogane didn't look at Fai all that much—or at least he tried not to, but he couldn't help but notice that his perpetually sunny companion's countenance seemed to have clouded over as surely as the sky above them. Fai spent the journey seeming deep in reflection on something, and only roused himself when, after going down a ramp and driving under a tunnel for some time, the car finally slowed and the scenery changed. They seemed to be in an enormous sewage tunnel system and, of all things, saw a hustling, bustling little town complete with houses, canals, and a large, busy market-place, all built under the city.

The car kept to the outside edge and Arashi drove very slowly, which was a good thing, as quite a few little children managed to get in front of them before being hauled off by their parents or playmates. They drove into a side-tunnel where eleven or twelve other cars were parked, and disembarked from the vehicle to continue on foot. They made their way through the town, swerving around tents and shanties, (after all, proper, solid houses weren't necessary since they had a ceiling over them) and through the market until they reached a larger, more permanent-looking structure. It was small compared to the buildings up above, but among the little wooden and cloth houses here, it was a colossus; rising a towering eight stories to meet with the roof of the tunnel-system, and wide enough for four civilian houses from up above to fit at its base. From the walls of this building were hung wires spanning to the opposite walls of the enclosure, and light-bulbs hung at intervals along them, illuminating the entire space. It was in through the sizable double-doors of this building that the two travelers were led by Rand and flanked by the other five people who had ridden with them. In the underground town, which Sorata told them was called Érail (Liaré spelled backwards) the people wore far more interesting clothing with a wider range of colors to them. However, most of what they were wearing was in various degrees of shabbiness, with faded colors, threadbare knees and mismatching patches. The clothing, and the people as well, were relatively clean and fairly well-kept, but everything looked like it had been passed down and re-used and repaired over eons of time. In the 'castle' (title courtesy of Sorata) the situation was the same. The 'uniforms' that anyone carrying a weapon wore were made out of a heavy blue material Arashi called 'denim.'

"Having our soldiers wear denim was kind of a practical joke that stuck," explained Rand who, upon closer inspection, was also wearing a pair of denim pants and a denim jacket over a white shirt. "My predecessor's surname was 'Denim,' you see, so since we had formerly had no uniforms to speak of, we decided to adopt this material."

"Your predecessor? So that makes you the one in charge then?" Fai asked. He had had a feeling that that was the case, but it had never been said.

"I'm the captain of our armed forces sure enough, so that makes me second in command. I answer to the princess. Really though," here he paused to ask a woman in a white dress and pinafore with a denim armband what room 'her highness' was in, and was directed down a hallway, "You could say that I'm in charge. After all, she doesn't interfere with my decisions too often. Her brother was our king, but he vanished—" Arashi glared at him— "Okay, he **died **three months ago and left the throne to Alaya."

"Everyone keeps saying vanished, but you," here Kurogane gestured at Arashi, "seem almost too persistent that he's dead. Why is that?" before Arashi had a chance to reply, they reached a heavy wooden door which rand opened, and the two travelers caught sight of their companions within, distracting them entirely.

"Fai! Kurogane! Cried Sakura happily, standing up from the bench she was sharing with Syaoran and running over to them. Syaoran hovered a little behind her, looking stressed and confused and relieved all at the same time.

"I'm glad you guys got here safely!" he exclaimed, a statement which caused both men to look at each other with raised eyebrows.

"Why wouldn't we have?" asked Kurogane, a little touched and a little insulted by the kid's unnecessary worry.

"Don't worry," said a smooth tenor voice from within the room. A man in his late twenties with blonde hair and warm, chocolate brown eyes set in a handsome tanned face clapped a hand on Syaoran's shoulder. "Not everybody in the resistance is as crazy a driver as I am." Syaoran jumped and Sakura shrank away a step.

"Yeah, Vic's a regular terror behind the wheel," came a musical alto voice from behind a curtain, "but if you need to get somewhere fast without being followed, there's no one better. He's a perilous sort of person, and a crack shot too, but nice once you get to know him."

Vic smiled making little wrinkles next to his eyes, and suddenly Sakura found it impossible to be afraid of him anymore. When he wasn't driving, he had a calming presence, she thought.

"Why thank you very much, Alaya. Perilous; I like the sound of it!" he replied, turning towards the curtain. He removed his hand from Syaoran's shoulder and gestured the whole assembly into the room. Rand strode past him and pushed the curtain aside, to reveal the violet-eyed girl lying on a narrow bed with a white coverlet, which she had her arms on top of in order to pin it to her sides. Judging by her bare shoulders, she wasn't wearing anything underneath, so this made complete sense. The visible bits of her were swathed and plastered with bandages, and a tall dark-skinned man was wrapping a particularly nasty gash on her left wrist. On her right side, sitting on a little stool, there was a girl who looked about fifteen, with platinum blonde hair in a high ponytail and tied with a ribbon and deep blue eyes in a delicate face that was simply too adorable to be allowed. She was wearing a denim jumper with princess seems and a pleated skirt that only reached to just above her knees and hugged her slender frame closely. Underneath, she had on a white long-sleeved shirt with ruffles at the wrists and a pink bow tied under the collar. She had Alaya's hair all pulled off to one side and was braiding it, but when the group walked in, she quickly tied it off and glided gracefully across the room to stand by Rand.

"Welcome home!" she chirped, in the softest, breathiest soprano voice ever to grace the ears of mortal men. "Who are your new friends?"

Rand gestured toward each traveler in turn as he said their names. "Now, in descending height order, we have Kurogane—" the ninja nodded in the girl's direction, trying to hide his blush, "Fai—" the wizard took the girl's hand and kissed it, saying "How do you do?" "Syaoran—" Syaoran bowed and said hello, "and Sakura." Sakura took the girl's hand in both of her own.

"It's a pleasure to meet you!" she said with a smile that rivaled even the girl's.

"They're travelers from a foreign country who ended up here by mistake. This," Rand continued, placing his big hand lightly on the girl's shoulder, "is my wife, Kori Alvys St. John."

"W-wife?" exclaimed Kurogane in shock, "She doesn't even look old enough to be your girlfriend!"

"She'll be turning twenty-three in a few weeks," chuckled Alaya, as though this was a normal assumption—which it _was_. Rand looked up and then gestured at her.

"The invalid is Princess Alaya D'Arc." Alaya's eyes flared black again as jerked upright, clamping her arms down on the coverlet for modesty.

"Oi!" she shouted.

"Don't be so touchy!" Rand snickered.

"Lay back down," commanded the dark-skinned man, giving her shoulder a push and sending her flumping back to her pillow. "Y'all are still injured."

"Yes, _master_ Will." She growled, but her eyes went back to being violet. Kori left Rand's side and sat back down.

Alaya reached over to a small table next to her and picked up a rectangular object small enough to hide in her closed fist, and offered it to Rand, who took it.

"It's got a complete technical read-out of all their latest weapons, and a catalogue of their top agents. Happy early birthday." Rand's face broke out into a wide grin before he could stop it, but then he scowled very convincingly.

"This is all very well and good, Alaya, but for the love of denim—" everyone snickered at that and made a train-wreck of Rand's scolding. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair.

"Seriously, this sort of thing is what we have _agents_ for. People who are trained to handle situations like this. What I don't understand is why you insist on doing everything yourself! For that matter, is it so hard to inform someone when you're going out? Don't you usually tell Kori? She said that you didn't say anything this time!"

"That's because it was an accident!" Alaya protested, suddenly on the defensive, "I didn't intend to get captured. It just happened, so get off my back about it! You know I can't control these things." She gave him a hard, meaningful look which instantly made him back down.

"Oh. Oh! _That's_ what happened. I see." He nodded, his eyes getting wide and his eyebrows soaring up his forehead. "I get it, okay, now _that_ wasn't your fault."

"Mm-hm," she nodded with him, "and not only did I manage to escape after that, I even brought back a lot of good info! See, I'm not totally useless after all!" She looked very satisfied with herself, and as Rand continued nodding, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wrapped the coverlet around her like a towel and walked past the group, still talking.

"I'm going to go get some clothes on and check on Kirrin. Have fun with that flash-drive!" and then she was gone.

Rand nodded once more, and then froze in mid-nod, turned toward the corridor and bellowed, "OI! YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OUT OF BED YET!" The only answer he got in return was an echoing laugh that seemed to come from a great distance away. Kori involuntarily giggled as her husband, who had been so serious moments before, dashed helter-skelter in the direction he guessed Alaya had gone.

'That's another thing that he and Kuro-bigs have in common,' thought Fai, also snickering, but then he became sober again. The princess had done an excellent job of shielding her private parts, but the bandages on her arms and legs covered extensive areas. She was certainly not supposed to be up and about. For some odd reason, this bothered him, a lot. He didn't know why, but ever since he had set eyes on her, something like déjà-vu had been tugging at the edges of his distant memories. He felt like he had looked into those violet eyes before, and hadn't even been surprised by the way she had distracted Rand as she snuck out from under his nose. He wracked his brains as Kori led them to another room, this one much bigger, with many tables and stools, and served them a meal of things that he remembered having seen—and tasted—in the Hanshin Republic. The two worlds seemed very similar, except that on the surface, this one was devoid of color or anything else interesting, and the people up there all looked as if they had not smiled in a very long time. He tried not to let himself get distracted by comparing the two worlds, but his search of his memories for Alaya or any sign of her turned out completely fruitless, and soon he gave up.

'It's probably just another parallel, or déjà-vu.' He reasoned, and forgot all about it.

**A/N: Well, that's all for today folks! Please review; I really want to know your impressions of the story and what you might like to see happen next!**

**Also, two famous actors are featured in this chapter. Can anyone guess who I'm talking about? **

**Rand: Umm, not to burst your bubble or anything, but it's pretty obvious.**

**Me: Oi! Keep your comments to yourself! And Kori, stop letting him put stuff in my notes!**

**Kori: titters well I'm sorry, but you know you're soooo predictable; it doesn't take a genius to guess your password. I couldn't resist giving it a try! Forgivsies? **

**Me: NO!**

**Kori: does puppy-dog face. **

**Me: sigh. fine, I forgive you. OOF! Quit hugging me! You know I don't like it when people hug me! Argh! Crash!**

**{Due to the destruction of the monitor, the system is shutting down now.}**

**Rand & Me in one voice: #$&!**


	3. The Aviary

**A/N: Hey there everybody! I discovered a button on my account that lets me look at the traffic on my stories, and I'm so glad that so many people are reading 'Sister of the Wind!' Here is chapter three! **

**Fai: Lest she forgets, I'd like to inform you all who the two actors featured in chapter two were.**

**Alaya: First, we had the crazy driver, Vic Mignogna, who voices Fai in the anime, as well as a myriad of other characters in various shows.**

**Rand: the other was the doctor, Will Smith, who has nothing whatsoever to do with anime, but he's in here anyway. I have no idea why. **

**Kori: It's because whenever you say his name, our authoress starts jumping around squealing, like she's doing now.**

**Me: Squeal! Omigosh! Will Smith! He's hot! Will Smith! Yay!**

**Kurogane: Since she looks in no condition to do the disclaimer, I will inform you that that infatuated idiot has never in her life had any contact with either man, aside from owning a bunch of movies and anime that include them, and a bunch of songs sung by Mignogna. That means that these 'cameos' were done without their consent or knowledge, and have nothing to do with the actual people or their views.**

**Me: sniffle You don't gotta' rub it in y'know! **

_Chapter three: The Aviary_

After the group had finished their meal, and Fai had finished teasing Kurogane about his clumsy attempts with fork and knife, and Kurogane had finished chasing Fai around the cafeteria, Arashi showed them to the guest quarters. Sorata had called the cafeteria the 'Great Hall,' but the name was simply to grand for such a casual place. Fai, Kurogane and Syaoran were going to share a room with a set of bunk-beds and a twin bed; and Sakura, with Alaya's permission of course, was going to sleep in the master bedroom. It had two beds, Sorata explained, because Alphonse and Alaya had shared it until three months ago.

This reminded Fai of what he had been going to ask Arashi about earlier, but before he could open his mouth, Rand walked back in looking somewhat placated and began giving instructions about some 'raid' that was being conducted later that night. The resistance folks all left, Kori promising to clear the sleeping arrangement with Alaya, and the five travelers were left alone.

"This place," commented Kurogane, "is _weird_."

"And perilous!" nodded Syaoran emphatically.

"But the people seem nice enough," chimed in Sakura brightly. "After all, they're letting us stay here without asking a bunch of nosy questions." She took off Syaoran's gloves and gave them back to him, turning pink. "Thank you for lending me these," she murmured. He blushed too, and the moment was simply adorable, until Fai spoke up and ruined it.

"I'm going to go take a look around." He muttered, and without waiting to make sure they had heard him, he swept out of the room.

"He's probably looking for the bathroom," speculated Mokona, finally coming out from under Syaoran's cloak. Syaoran and Sakura both nodded and said 'Oh!' in comprehension, but Kurogane looked broodingly at the mages discarded coat on the top bunk and said nothing at all.

Fai's stroll through the castle took him through a lot of the more industrial areas, like the laundry, the kitchens, and the armory, which he noted was quite well stocked. There were hundreds of different kinds of guns, explosives, knives, and bottles of goodness-only-knew-what, with skull-and-cross-bone labels.

He also found a big room filled with nothing but shelves and tables of every different kind of thing that could possibly be made out of denim, from jeans to gun-holsters to what looked like a hang-glider.

"Hyuu!" he exclaimed quietly, "there's such a thing as taking a joke too far!"

The people he encountered were all fairly courteous, and only too happy to answer random questions. He got the impression that they were well accustomed to showing new people around. He wandered around for a long while, trying unsuccessfully to quell the strange restlessness he was feeling. He kept moving as if he was looking for something, but he didn't know what he was looking for.

After mounting a spiral staircase which seemed to wind on into eternity, he found himself facing a door with a sign on it written in a different language. Inside, he heard what sounded like a muffled human voice, and a cacophony of chirping, whistling, and flapping noises that he could not place.

Pushing open the door, he found himself in a circular room filled with large birds; birds of _prey_ by the look of their talons. There were several openings in the ceiling which Fai assumed led to the surface from which water was trickling into wide pans on the floor. Several birds were perched on the edges of these pans lapping up the water, but as soon as he entered, they, and most of the others, started flying around and shrieking, reducing the scene to a blur of feathers and beaks and gulp! talons.

"Settle down, settle down," soothed a familiar alto voice. Fai followed his ears and made his way—carefully for fear of exciting the birds again—to the center of the room.

Alaya had changed into a pair of cutoff overalls over a black t-shirt, and had a wide brown canvas belt around her waist with two small pouches in the back and several loops on the sides for clipping things to. She was sitting on an iron rail that looked like it was made to be a perch, with one forearm totally encased in a heavy leather glove. One of the birds was perching on it, and she was stroking its chest feathers with her free hand.

"You again," she murmured without looking away from the bird, "What brings you to the aviary, Mr…?" Although she did not sound as hostile as she had back on the surface, her tone held very little actual interest. Regardless, Fai's face donned a very convincing smile and he bowed with a flourish.

"My name is Fai D. Flourite, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, princess." Before straightening up, he noted that her bare feet, hovering a few centimeters from the floor, were heavily bandaged.

"Nice to meet you." She sounded like she was only half paying attention. After a few moments of awkward silence, Fai continued.

"Actually, I was doing a spot of exploring and got turned around; that's how I ended up here. You called this an aviary? What kind of birds are these?" to his immense relief, he seemed to have at last caught her attention. She turned to look at him, and the corners of her mouth twitched ever so slightly upward, softening her expression.

"They're currier hawks. We use them to send messages to our bases in other parts of Dumault. Do they not have hawks in your country?"

Fai nodded, taking a few tentative steps closer.

"Yes, but they must be a different breed. These are much bigger than any I've ever seen." This was quite true; the hawks perched all around them were the size of eagles, and although they sported the same grey and brown plumage, each bird had a brightly colored tuft of feathers somewhere in its body.

"Is that Kirrin?" he asked, eager to keep the conversation going and remembering what she had said before.

"Yeah," she replied, her almost-smile getting marginally bigger as she turned to survey the hawk on her arm again.

"He's a beautiful bird," he commented, wracking his brains to come up with something to say to fill up the oppressive silence. He felt strangely agitated. Something about this girl threw him out of countenance, and he discovered that somewhere during the exchange, he had stopped smiling.

She turned to look at him once more, and her face morphed into the expression most resembling a smile that she had shown yet.

"Y'know," she observed, lifting her arm to shoo Kirrin back to his nest and standing up, "when you relax your face, you're kind of good looking."

To Fai's utter horror, as she brushed past him and creaked open the door, he realized that the hot, tingly feeling in his cheeks and nose was a blush spreading inexorably across his face.

"C'mon," she called, "I'll show you back to your room. You're in the guest-quarters, right?" with some difficulty, he hitched his poker-face back on and followed her down the long staircase.

She walked a little more slowly than he thought was normal, with uncertain steps and a hand on the wall for support. Her feet were obviously hurting her. After about twenty steps, he couldn't watch anymore and, without saying a word, swept her up into his arms bridal-style. She turned crimson—whether from rage or embarrassment he neither knew nor cared—and pushed rather weakly against his shoulders.

"What do you think you're doing?" she exploded. "Don't TOUCH me!"

"You're being an idiot." He snapped, letting his smile drop into the scowl it was longing to become. Then, he smirked. "Y'know, if you stopped trying so hard to be miss macho-woman, you'd be kind of good-looking too."

"W-what?" she spluttered, forgetting that she was supposed to be shoving him away.

"Hmm; interesting. I have made a discovery!" he exclaimed happily. Not knowing what to do with her hands, Alaya settled for folding her arms across her chest and glaring resolutely at a point directly opposite to the man carrying her.

"What would that be?" she gritted out through clenched teeth.

"You pitch your voice!" he stated with glee, glad to be back on top. "The way you've been speaking is a full octave lower than is natural for you." A sound like something between a gasp and a squeak confirmed his hypothesis, and he chuckled triumphantly. A moment later, however, she looked up at him with a penetrating gaze.

"I also have made a discovery," she shot back. "You really don't like it when your clown-mask slips and people glimpse the real you."

"The real me?" he asked skeptically. She nodded, looking quite pleased with herself.

"You're arrogant, for starters." She began. He raised an eyebrow. "Oh yes, very arrogant, but not without cause. You're strong, and you're arrogant because you don't usually lose." Fai's lips twitched and he dipped his head in affirmation. He didn't mind the tack the conversation was taking; arrogant and strong were just fine with him. Moments later it was his turn to squeak weirdly as she almost made him drop her by squeezing the muscles of his arm between her fingers in several different places. He instantly regretted taking his coat off; her probing touch penetrated his shirt and tickled dreadfully.

"You have a fairly uninteresting physique," she mused, "nothing on that red-eyed bloke. This suggests that you win your battles with cunning and speed rather than strength.

Fai's heart pounded erratically, and his whole body began feeling like it was made of jelly. "I'm going to drop you if you keep that up," he warned. Why was he trembling? He had forgotten that he was so ticklish!

"Ooh, what a nightmare, having done to me what I wanted in the first place!" she laughed sarcastically and kept playing around with his arm. She seemed to know exactly where the most responsive points were, and pressed and poked them without mercy.

"In addition, you're perceptive," she continued.

"And sensitive," he retorted, "knock it off!"

"Don't want to'," she chirped happily, like a child being told to do something by someone they know has no real authority over them. "You're very perceptive. You noticed that my feet hurt, and you already know your way around the castle after only having been here for an hour. You're not even really lost," she accused with a well timed squeeze to a particularly ticklish spot on his much-abused arm.

"When you said that you were lost before, you had that phony smile, so you were probably lying. Also, you're making straight for my room, navigating un-erringly through a large building which was constructed by amateur architects who wouldn't know the meaning of the phrase 'logical organization' if it fell on their heads." She squeezed that spot again, and Fai's body shuddered involuntarily, but he figured that annoying him was what she was going for, so he kept a straight face.

"What makes you think that I'm not just wandering around aimlessly?" he asked, in a passable imitation of politeness.

"Simple," she replied, "If you needed directions, you would have asked me by now. It would have expedited the process of getting me off of you, and if you were lucky, would have distracted me from playing around with your arm for a while. But back to the real you. When you fight, you begin by letting your enemy make the first move." Squeeze. Tremble. "You dodge the first few attacks and gauge their fighting style. Then, you find their weakness and exploit it." Punctuating her point, she somehow found an even more ticklish point and started messing around with it. Fai felt like all the energy was being drained out of him, and wondered if he was really so ticklish, or if she was poking his pressure-points. Whatever she was doing, his inner organs seemed to have all turned to frogs, which were all hopping around inside of him. With a final clasp of that one spot, she seemed to lose interest and let her hand fall back into her lap. They walked in silence for another minute, and then, when his heart-rate had finally gone back to normal and his breathing had slowed, she began running her fingers gently over the back of the hand he was using to support her legs.

'Why is she rubbing my hand?' he wondered. 'Does she not have the capacity to leave me alone, or is this revenge for picking her up when she did not want me to?' But rub wasn't quite the right word. No, her touch was too feather-light for that; as if she was afraid to touch him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. With a jolt, it occurred to him that that was the hand she had struck away before. He looked down at her, and her face had fallen out of its smile and looked simply tragic. "You've been such a gentleman this whole time, and I'm just being an ass. In my defense, I've been in captivity for a week, so I'm on the defensive whenever someone touches me. Not that that lets me off responding like I have been. I'm really sorry." Her voice was low, and she did not look up from her own knees, though she did not stop… _stroking_… his hand.

"When someone touches you? I take it you weren't treated very kindly then." He said, his voice lowering in volume to match hers. She nodded.

"I was interrogated for information on our base's location and the identity of our leaders. Luckily," she looked him in the eye again, her face brightening a touch, "they didn't figure out that I was a high-ranking member of our organization, so they didn't have very high hopes for me, and were satisfied with some lies I made up. I got a couple of government officials arrested who were too close to finding us. That part was fun." The mischievous sparkle had returned to some degree, but she still looked sad.

"I understand. You must have had a rather trying time." He soothed, glad that he seemed to have the upper hand once more. His poker-face smile made itself seen again. "You must have been very frightened." Suddenly, she was glaring at him again. Her hand stopped moving back and forth across his.

"You're lonely." She stated flatly. He did a mental double-take. When had they gotten back on this topic?

"What gives you that idea? I'm traveling with friends you know," he contradicted with a light chuckle.

"Cue fake smile and laugh combo," she groused. "I don't know how you can be lonely traveling with friends, but you just… are. I can't explain it." She was back to staring at her knees, with a look of deep concentration on her face, as if the secrets of the universe were written there.

She also resumed running the tips of her fingers back and forth along the back of his hand. The jelly-feeling and the pounding heart-beat returned with a vengeance, but for reasons unknown even to him, he put off asking her to stop for a few seconds, and than a few more, and then before he knew it, they were standing at her bedroom door.

After depositing her in a chair that she that directed him to, (in the sitting-room; the bedroom itself was through another door) and fetching a book from off the shelf on the other side of the room that she asked for, he finally left, closing the door behind him. Not, however, before running his hand lightly through her hair as he walked past her. After he left, he waited until he was certain he was out of earshot, and then broke into an all-out sprint.

How, how, how had he let her get under his skin like that? How had she wormed her was past the many layers of barriers he had erected around himself and gotten inside his head? How had she been able to mess with him like that? And why, WHY did she seem SO familiar? He figured that he would have remembered meeting someone that annoying before…

Inside the room, Alaya (who had gotten up as soon as Fai had shut the door and listened with her ear pressed against it until his footsteps faded into silence) slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, with her head between her knees and her hands folded as if in prayer.

What was she doing? Never in a million years would she have dreamed of saying things like that to some random guy she had only just met that day! For the last three months, she had vowed to herself that until Alphonse returned, she would take his place. She spoke like him, acted like him, and even wore his old clothes! She had taken up his sword, and a reluctant Rand was teaching her how to use it. That was how she was coping. Not having Al here was so painful for her; impersonating him was the only way she had left to feel close to her lost brother. She had adopted his habits, like the way he ran his hand through his hair from the front to the back, the way he walked like the military leader that he was, even the way he slept on his back (even though she always woke up on her front, she did make an effort.) She even stopped touching people. Al had never touched other people if he could help it; she had always been the physical one.

Yet somehow, inexplicably, she had found herself messing with that blonde man's arm, and speaking in her own voice, and even laughing like herself. Back in the infirmary, she had laughed at Rand in Al's laugh, but she had laughed at Fai in her own laugh. What was it about him that made her want to be 'Alaya' again, and not 'Alphonse?'

She stood, and it _did_ hurt, but she sucked it up like Alphonse always did and strode purposefully into the bedroom and over to Al's wardrobe. Dinner was in a few hours, and she didn't want to go down wearing nothing but the over-alls; she was cold. She riffled through the clothes for a while, but today, nothing satisfied her. She turned around to look at what had once been her half of the room, and gazed at her wardrobe. She had not been in there since Al's disappearance three months ago; for that matter, she had avoided her side of the room entirely. She walked across to it, and pushed away the curtain that separated it from the rest of the room.

**A/N: So, there you have it! Please, please review and tell me what you think!**

**Kori: does that adorable puppy-pout again Pleeeeeease? Won't you review and tell us what you think? I really really really really wanna' know! **

**Alaya: (still doing Alphonse's voice) Whether you liked it or hated it, please let us know! Constructive criticism is always welcome! After all, how else can she make the story better if she doesn't have any input?**

**Fai: Yeah! Maybe if you all review and ask her not to, Alaya won't mess around with my arm anymore! **

**Alaya: Fat chance. You're reactions are just too funny!**

**Fai: Oi! Authoress, a little support here!**

**Me: giggles menacingly No way! And in the next chapter, I might even make you take your shirt off too! Who knew that you were so ticklish? I seem to have finally found your weak-spot!**

**Fai: tries to smile and frown and gulp all at the same time, and ends up making a fearful grimace at which we all laugh.**

'**Cel: Mr. Fai, you're face looks really weird.**

**Alaya: Oi! 'Cel, it's not your turn yet! Get backstage! **


	4. The Resistance

**Hey there everybody! **

**Kori: W-why did so few people review? ()**

**Sigh Kori, I think you're asking for too much. Let's just drop the reviews thing. Besides… I found this awesome button on my account that shows me how many people have been reading my story… and there are a lot! I mean, it'd be nice if you'd review too, but at least now I know that I don't only have three readers.**

**While we're on the subject, thank you **_**Rita-san**_** and **_**A K a N e the o n e-san**_**! I'm glad you both liked it!**

_**SevenCandlesticks-san**_**: Thank you so much! On the subject of Moko-chan, yes, I'm also aware that they are 'its' however, the 'object' pronoun seemed awfully impersonal considering this IS Mokona we're talking about, y'know? Thus, I made use of the male pronoun for a 'being of nebulous gender'. Similar to how people say 'He' when referring to God, when in fact we were never told God's gender either. Thanks for the input though! I didn't know that there were typical pronouns for them!**

**m(_._)m {Bow}**

**Disclaimer: If I was a member of CLAMP, I would have put all this stuff in the books and charged **_**money**_** for it! But I am not, so I must resort to writing Fan Fiction in hopes that someday they will lend it [Tsubasa copyright] to me. '-_-**

Chapter four: The Resistance

Later that evening, everyone congregated in the Great Hall for the evening meal, creating a veritable sea of denim-clad individuals. The travelers, with Mokona playing at being Sakura's stuffed toy, found an un-occupied table and sat down there, after helping themselves to plates heaped with food from a buffet at one end of the wide, low-ceilinged room. At the other end was a slightly raised platform with two large chairs and a smaller chair on either side of the large ones. Kurogane, who had some experience with royalty explained that it was called a dais, and that was where the important people sat.

"Ooh! Kuro-tan is so knowledgeable!" Fai cooed, having thoroughly returned to his old, teasing, annoying self. "Who would have thought that the big scary Mr. Ninja would know things about the niceties of royal dining?" on a sudden impulse, the magician poked Kurogane's arm, causing his big friend to twitch spontaneously away.

"Is that a pressure-point?" he inquired as Kurogane glared at him.

"No, it's just annoying, so quit it" the man growled. Thoroughly bored by this point, Mokona 'forgot' that he was supposed to be stuffed and padded across the table to poke Kurogane's arm.

"Aww, Kuro-puu's ticklish!" he squealed happily.

"Knock it off, pork-bun!" Kurogane bellowed, taking a swipe at his fluffy white companion, who dodged easily.

"What's a pork-bun?" asked Alaya, who was sitting on Fai's other side with a plate of food and the air of having been there for some time. Syaoran, Sakura, and Mokona all gasped, and Fai's face twitched but retained his playful smile. Kurogane was the only one who didn't react; he had sensed her approaching.

In actuality, Fai had sensed her as well, but his surprise issued from a different source.

The front sections of Alaya's long, dark hair had been braided and pulled to the back of her head with a wide white ribbon, which matched the long-sleeved shirt she had on under a floor-length denim jumper. The skirt was made of enough material that if she had spun, it would have stood out in a flat circle from her hips.

She was wearing gold hoops in her ears.

She even had make-up on; not that she really needed it, but it made her eyes and lips more defined.

Where had all that come from?

Seeing his confusion, though he was sure he had done a good job of hiding it, she smiled playfully, like she had earlier.

"I _am_ a girl, you know. A princess, for that matter. What's so weird about me wearing a dress?"

"Um," he said stupidly. Why was it that her tight bodice, hugging her curves, struck him speechless? She was really quite filled out, now that he could see her without the baggy over-alls. Very well filled out… he mentally shook himself. What was he thinking? There was no way, _no WAY that he found her—_

She reached across him to help herself to some condiment, absentmindedly brushing up against him.

_**Oh yeah. **_

_**He found her attractive. **_

"So even formalwear is denim?" he observed lightly, helping her reach the condiment she had been trying to get. "Y'know, there's such a thing as taking a joke too far."

"Thank you," she replied, applying the condiment, which must have been salad-dressing, to her salad. "It's not just that it's a practical joke, although that's part of it. It annoyed captain Denim rather dreadfully. No, it's because denim, being a hardy material, is the favorite garb of the layman. It's worn by those who work with their hands, so in a way, it's a symbol of the old order. The order that we are trying to resurrect. Oh!" she interjected suddenly, "but you lot are from a different country, I forgot. I guess you wouldn't know about what's been going on here."

The five travelers all shook their heads, leaning in as she began to weave her tale.

_The country of Liaré used to be a simple, peaceful place. People worked hard, and the land prospered. The Arc line ruled with a gentle yet firm hand, guiding the people with strong principles, and stronger compassion. _

_But, when my great-great-grandfather was on the throne, That Man came. He was an envoy from a far away country, he said, who had come to bring Liaré a great gift from his master. He introduced us to many wondrous machines that he claimed would make our lives better, and for a time, it seemed like they did._

_There were machines that sewed, tended, and harvested crops, raised livestock, wove cloth, and even cooked food. There were machines that could record sound and pictures, so that performers would only have to do a show once and millions of people could see it. He brought machines that built buildings, and made them so tall that they seemed to touch the sky, and machines that transported people at high speeds through the streets, and along rails. There were even machines that could cure illnesses and prolong people's lives._

_People stopped visiting one another; they called instead, or e-mailed or texted. Real communication became a thing of the past. Everything mankind could possibly want or need was made by machines. _

_But we became conceited. We believed that the machines would do all the work, and all we had to do was sit around all day and enjoy ourselves. People stopped working, and stopped teaching their children to work. All anyone needed to know was how to operate machines .that put absolutely all of the power in the country into the hands of those who had brought the machines to us; and to That Man._

_Our economy was shattered._

_Relationships began failing left and right. A 2% divorce rating was pushed up to 93%._

_Creativity died._

_Ingenuity died._

_Original thought died._

_Courage, wisdom and honor all died._

_Now, as things stand, those who came after That Man hold all of the power, and the people, with their TV's and cell phones and computers are content to let things stay as they are, because they do not know any better. _

_Our children's minds are enslaved whilst they are still young, and they are raised by the schools rather than by their own parents._

_We, the people, are now nothing more than pawns of the state._

"Of course," Alaya commented after a few minutes of silence, "It was entirely our own faults. We loved comfort more than honor, and that was our downfall. Still, we of the resistance have pledged that as long as even one of us remains standing on the field of battle, the fight for our liberty will continue. We've already started getting as many rebels employed as teachers as we can. If we can indoctrinate the children young ourselves, we can show them how things are supposed to be. It's not much, but it's a start."

"But if the people are happy with how things are now…" Sakura mused. Alaya shook her head.

"They're not. It's just that anyone who stirs up trouble, even if just by making an innocent little comment, vanishes the following night, never to be seen or heard from again."

"Oh." Said Sakura.

"All we want really is the power to control our own destinies." Kori explained, it being her turn to appear out of nowhere. She looked as if she was about to say something profound, but was interrupted by a shout from the doorway.

"The raiders are back!" shouted a big, swarthy man whom Syaoran could have sworn he knew from Oto. Suddenly the whole room was a flurry of activity as people all got up to leave for some reason.

"Uuh, what's going on?" asked Kurogane with a raised eyebrow.

"The people who went on the raid for supplies have returned. They left around an hour ago, you know. That's where Rand is." Alaya enlightened them, standing up and brushing the wrinkles dexterously from her skirt. Kori had already vanished, no doubt to greet her returning husband.

"They may have only been gone a short time, but this evening's raid was an important one. C'mon, let's go see!"

"What were they stealing?" asked Fai, jogging to keep up with Alaya's fast pace. She turned to him with an expression better suited for a Cheshire-cat's face than a human's.

"Can you say, 'grand theft auto'?"

**Sorry about the shorter chapter! Sigh what a pain. I loathe writing background information. I have nothing against **_**making it up,**_** mind you, but its SO dryyyyyyyyyyy when it's all in a concentrated form like that! Oh whatever. All's well that just ends ;) **


	5. Three Months

**A/N: Sorry for the wait! I had finals and a bunch of things to finish up, not to mention having my wisdom teeth out. This chappie is dedicated to my friend Nims because without her, it would totally not be up. For the time being, the postings will be a touch erratic, until my summer schedule solidifies. Here's the next chapter, but first, a tribute to the wonderfulness of Mokona Modoki! **

**Mokona: Yay!**

**Me: Yes! One of Mokona's 108 secret techniques is the ability to translate any language! He (Or she, or it, whatever you prefer) is so awesome, **_**even brand-names get translated! **_

**Mokona: (Dons self-satisfied smirk.) Mokona's the greatest!**

**Kurogane: you just did that because you were too lazy to make up your own brand names.**

**Me: well, you know what they say; necessity is the mother of invention, but laziness begets strokes of genius! **

**Kurogane: So you admit to being lazy.**

**Me: (TT-TT) **

**Fai: since our authoress is once again indisposed, Mokona, would you please do the disclaimer?**

**Mokona: sure thing Fai! (Smoke begins pouring out of his ears.)**

**Syaoran: Uuh? **

**Mokona:**

_**Dcilsaemir: Pinrcess Aayla D'Rac deos not own hte rgiths to Tubsasa or any of the bnard nmeas used here!**_

**Sakura: Um, Moko-chan? I think your translator is fried.**

**Mokona: No, it jsut nedes new btaeteris!**

**Everyone: "…"**

_Three Months_

In the side tunnel which the people of Érail had designated 'the garage', eight newly acquired vehicles stood in a row awaiting the princess's inspection. The rebels needed vehicles with windows that opened all the way, dark tinted for secrecy, and with skylights. After all, where else would one mount a gun? Their preferred models were convertibles, and this haul did not disappoint.

Rand lead Alaya and Kori and the travelers (who had nothing better to do) down the line-up and pointed out each automobile in turn.

"First, we have a Mustang convertible, then an almost-new Honda van, and a tested and true Ford pick-up." He slapped the palm of his hand down on the truck's hood before moving on. "We've got a Dodge minivan, two more trucks; a Toyota and a Mitsubishi, and my own little acquisition, the latest Jaguar Convertible." Rand looked quite pleased with himself, but Alaya's glare was riveted on the monstrosity at the end of the row.

"A _Hummer_?" she asked incredulously, "don't you know that those get terrible mileage? We don't need an all-terrain vehicle in the city. That thing's just a gas-guzzling, environment-destroying monster!" Rand sighed.

"Tell that to Shogo. He insisted we nab it."

Shogo got out of the Hummer and grinned a little sheepishly. "C'mon your highness, it's a specialty order!"

Alaya's eyebrow jerked upward.

"Yep!" exclaimed Primera, speaking through the rolled-down window of the passenger's seat, "the prime minister himself ordered it specially made to celebrate his third term of office! We couldn't leave it behind!"

Alaya's glare softened a bit and her lips twitched ever so slightly. "Regardless, it was wasted energy; we can't use it. Although perhaps it might be of use in the western region when we visit castle Enix. Have it put into deep storage for now." Shogo nodded, got back into the driver's seat and drove out through yet another tunnel.

Alphonse would have thought it was a riot if he had been around for the Hummer incident, Alaya mused as she lay awake on her bed that night, staring at the ceiling and thinking the thoughts that she banished from her mind during the day. She tried not to think things like "I wish he was here," but at night when she realized that nobody was snoring near her, (Sakura did not snore, she just tossed and turned,) she would always reflect that her grief's ebbing was like the flowing away of the ocean from the shore at low tide; it would always return stronger than before.

Not bothering to even try to sleep on her back, she rolled over and planted her face into her pillow.

Fai was miffed. Keeping secrets was _his_ job, as was finding out those of others. Alaya had the kind of façade that irritated him the most, especially because it was nearly perfect. Sure, he had cracked it that afternoon, but that was a small victory. Her real personality, which he had glimpsed through the fissures here and there, seemed like the sort of person he'd get along with. She had lost a twin, too. That was something. But the way she kept everyone at arms' length was infuriating! Something was up, he knew it. What could have happened three months ago? And why in the name of flying pigs did she seem so familiar?

And attractive…

He was most certainly going to find out. In the middle of the night, he crept noiselessly through the winding halls of the castle up to Alaya's room. Her door was closed, but he already knew that the hinges weren't squeaky, so he glided in like a part of the deep shadows cloaking the room. Alaya's bedroom was separated from the sitting room by another door, but this one was open. Beyond, Fai came upon a room with two twin beds separated by a night table and a curtain aperture on either side, most likely leading to closets or bathrooms, or both. A shape on one of the beds proved to be Alaya, and he strode across the room to stand over her. She was curled up on her side, wrapped in her quilt like a chrysalis with only her face peeking out.

His hands were trembling. If she found him in here at this hour, she'd never forgive him. His behavior defied reasonable explanation. Still, his prying inquisitiveness overpowered his judgment, and against all that was sane in his mind, against every promise he'd ever made to himself, against the little voice in the back of his head screaming _'Curiosity! Cat!' _he raised his hand to let his palm hover over the sleeping visage in front of him.

"Permissum mihi penetro, video vidi visum vestri somnium," he breathed, and was instantly swept into a whirlwind of colors and sounds all smeared and jumbled together into a jarring 'reality' within the confines of Alaya's mind. He closed his eyes and waited for the commotion to pass. According to the book he had learned the incantation from, the disorienting barrage of sensation was a fairly typical side-effect, and would abate momentarily after penetrating the mind.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing in the middle of a battle field. It took only a cursory glance to tell who the opponents were, as they were either clad in denim or black suits and sun-glasses. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun blazed down on the snowy parking lot where the confrontation was taking place. There were a vast number of the black suits pitted against significantly fewer rebels, but Alaya's people weren't disappointing her today, for they gave better than they received by far and wide.

In the thick of everything, one warrior stood out among the rest. Though Rand was doing quite well, and a number of others were making notable progress, the young man in the jeans and a matching duster wielded a pair of Dao swords like twin scythes of pure death. He mowed down all who came before him, not even pausing his steps as he strode resolutely forward toward the office-building to which the parking-lot belonged. He cut a swathe through the ranks of the defenders, and in minutes had mounted the stairs to the entrance. After taking out every black-suited figure foolish enough to oppose him, he turned to face the mêlée, and Fai could see his face for the first time. With his features and his red-brown hair, it didn't take a genius to discern his identity.

Alphonse gestured sharply toward the building with the hilt of one of his swords, and at his signal, all but a handful of his troops abandoned the fight and congregated around him. It was then that Fai finally caught sight of Alaya.

Or… was it?

She didn't look much like the frowsy spitfire she pretended to be, or like the austere princess she had been at dinner. Her hair was in high pigtails, and her long-sleeved denim dress had a short, pleated skirt under which cotton shorts were just visible. She was wearing black thigh-highs, and denim bootlets that just barely covered her ankles. She had a pair of lopsided belts on, with one side of each where it ought to be, and the other hanging low enough to put the holsters which hung from them near the bottom of her skirt. The guns from those holsters were blazing in her hands, and there was a look of wild, savage euphoria in her face.

Acting as a rear-guard for the group assaulting the stairs, she walked backwards with as much confidence as walking forwards, and shot down any who entered her sphere of protection. Fai glanced around. As this was Alaya's dream, her soul should have been watching from somewhere, but he couldn't seem to spot her. That meant that ten-to-one she was experiencing the event from inside herself, so when the pig-tailed Alaya entered the building, he wasn't at all surprised to find himself being swept in along with her.

The assault team ignored the row of elevators and scurried up the maintenance ladders beside the shafts. The time for stealth had apparently ended when the firefight outside began. Fai did not bother to climb the ladder; being a mere phantom, he drifted up level with Alaya's head as she ascended with her guns in their holsters and a key between her teeth. Why she had a key in her mouth, he did not know.

Alphonse was the first onto the makeshift landing the elevator maintenance people had erected, and his sister was close on his heels. She un-locked the door with the key (though why she had not just left it in her pocket for the climb escaped the watching mage) and Rand clambered up from the ladder and burst straight through the opening into a hallway with thick luxurious carpeting and grey walls hung with 'modern art.'

"How they pass these geometric scribbles off as 'art' I'll never fathom," muttered a tall, well-built fellow from Alaya's shoulder where he had stationed himself as they made their way towards a door at the end of the hall. Alaya rolled her eyes and shook her head in agreement. Alphonse's stern countenance altered by the merest twitch of his lips for a brief second, and then he spoiled the party.

"Do try to focus, lieutenant," he said dryly in a smoother, more melodious voice than Fai had expected from someone so intense. Alaya giggled and somehow made the sound sinister. Rand just shook his head.

The attackers reached their goal and after cracking his large knuckles theatrically, Rand knocked it inwards with one hefty punch.

'Good grief! He may be stronger than Kuro-puu,' thought the wizard, admiring the captain's muscular physique, and then harkening back to Alaya's commentary, and absentmindedly wondering if he'd look like that if he worked out regularly. A moment later, he dismissed the stupid notion and focused again on the battle that was ensuing.

There were more black suits on this floor, and still wearing sunglasses indoors, which was insane. Nonetheless, this lot seemed better trained than the group on the ground had been, and even the twins were having a modicum of difficulty passing through them. Alaya grimaced as a bullet winged her, slicing a slit in the sleeve of her dress and making a shallow cut into her upper arm. The lucky shooter's luck ran out a moment later and he fell pierced by both sword and bullet. It was then that Fai noticed something strange. There was no blood on any of the black suits. That, and the only corpses he could see were rebels, even though they were dishing out twice as good as they were getting. He studied the man the twins had just killed, and his eyes widened as the body turned to black smoke and vanished. They couldn't be… could they?

It was just when he realized it that things went horribly awry. The black smoke visible swirling around everyone's feet suddenly rushed together into a dense cloud, which re-formed into what looked like… but it just couldn't be!

Who did he think he was kidding? He wondered as the giant bat threw down its assailants left and right like a high wind scattering dry leaves. Rand and the lieutenant charged to meet it head-on, and the lieutenant nearly died from the two-foot-long claw that came within centimeters of ripping his throat out. Rand jumped into the opening left by the beast's strike, but the back-lashing claws raked across him and took a sizable chunk out of his arm. He bellowed in pain and rage, and moments later, the bat lost that claw. Unfortunately, it had several others.

Not to mention its teeth, which it sank into the scruff of a rebel man's neck, using him as a living shield as the lieutenant, having caught his second wind, brought his gun to bear.

"Blast," he hissed, lowering the weapon enough that he no longer presented a threat. The rest of the black-suits had vanished with the bat's appearance, either being absorbed into it or deciding they didn't want to be lunch, but Fai didn't' need to see them to hazard a guess as to what they really were.

And if he was right, the situation in Dumault was a great deal more serious than any of them suspected.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the scream of the hostage as he plummeted from the great height to which the bat had soared. The room they were in was some kind of fancy ballroom type of place, and it was a long way down. Had he hit the ground, he surely would have died, but instead, he fell into Alphonse's duster, held at the corners by the twins and a pair of others. The bat shrieked, whether in rage or simply because giant mutant beasts liked to shriek was impossible to tell.

It dove downward the ground like some twisted parody of a flacon's killing dive, and vanished through a hole in the floor, to be lost to view among swirling shades of blue, violet and black. The rebels gathered around the opening in confusion, and then all jumped back when a huge, black-suited figure appeared on its surface. It had the general shape of a man, possibly, but it was ten feet tall at least, with huge coiled muscles and a grotesquely twisted face beneath its sunglasses. It roared a challenge and the rebel forces drew back in fear, but (and Fai sensed it coming before it did) Alaya calmly brought her left pistol up and fired three rounds; to the knee, the abdomen, and the head.

Un-phased, the creature's skin seem to buckle around the imbedded bullets, and then one by one pushed them out of itself so that they clattered on the surface beneath him. That sound apparently convinced the princess that whatever the swirly thing was, it was solid enough to walk on, and she took several steps forward, firing off two more rounds into the thing's side and then swiftly reloading her weapon. The monster lumbered around to face her, and then with stunning alacrity, swept her away with a swipe of its arm. She flew across the big room, slammed into a wall, and moved no more. Fai could see blood trickling from a nasty welt on the back of her head.

With an inhuman roar, Alphonse was upon the creature, blades flashing like strobe lights as he ripped into whatever it was. The creature didn't stand a chance, and was reduced to nothing more than a bloody tangle of limbs in a matter of half a minute or so. It appeared that this thing, unlike its companions, had indeed been alive. Alphonse stood over his fallen foe, and after sending one more murderous glare in its direction, turned to face the onlookers.

"Remind me not to mess with Alaya," snickered the lieutenant. Alphonse smirked, and took a step towards his comrades.

His foot sank through the surface of the swirling colors, and along with the giant's corpse, he tumbled down the portal to oblivion. Somewhere to Fai's left, the stunned silence was broken as Alaya, who had regained consciousness a moment before, let out a feral scream of agony.

Then with a sudden rush of colors and sounds he was flung unceremoniously from her mind as she shattered her dream and awoke. With a gasp, Alaya sat up, sweat trickling in little rivulets down her face, neck and arms. She sat there panting for a moment, and Fai thought if he could just sneak away quietly…

"You!" she exclaimed breathlessly.

"Ah… I… Well I…" he stuttered, completely out of countenance and in deep trouble.

"You what?" she snarled, glaring at him with breathtaking intensity, like when they had met earlier.

"I… I'm sorry." He got out with a heavy sigh of resignation and guilt. He bowed low. "Forgive me, I was curious, and invaded your privacy."

"Get. Out. Now." she snapped, and that was all the cue the wizard needed. He beat a hasty retreat, shutting the door behind him, and sprinted headlong back to the guest quarters, his pounding heart making his whole body throb.

**A/N: Whew! Finally finished! This chapter has been a beast. _ **

**Sorry if there are any spelling or grammatical errors; I'm on some powerful pain meds and I'm out of commission from the neck up. :3 :3 **

**Unfortunately, I'm also experiencing what my mom thinks is an allergic reaction to said medication, considering that around the time it was supposed to take effect when I took the pill, I was discovered semi-conscious on the floor. '-_-**

**But! :) :) That means I'm pretty much confined to activities I can perform while seated, liiiiiike typing up more chapters! Yay!**

**Please review, it makes my day!**


	6. The People of the Dragon

**A/N: Thanks so much for waiting, everybody! During the school year I had this on hiatus because I was supposed to be focusing on school-related writing, but summer's here, so I'm back! Y'all have waited plenty long enough, so without further ado or rambling, I proudly present the sixth installment of Sister of the Wind!**

The People of the Dragon

The thunder storm had let up over night, to be replaced by a light misty rain and a thick fog, which together coated everything in little sparkling droplets of water. The air had a musty, damp scent to it, which had been masked by the deluge when they had last breathed it.

"Does it always rain so much in this country?" asked Syaoran. Rand nodded.

"It's usually precipitating in one form or another," he informed them as he drove them through the early-morning traffic in one of the stolen minivans. At breakfast, he had offered to give them a tour of the city.

"After all," he had pointed out, "if you're here looking for something, you're probably not going to find it by sitting around the castle." They had been all too willing to accept his offer, especially the mage. Fai was grateful for any excuse not to see _her_ that morning. They had all dressed in clothes that would blend in better in the city above, and departed before the individual he was avoiding had gotten out of bed.

Sakura told them that Alaya said she didn't sleep well, and was going to try and get a little more shuteye before getting up. Apparently Sakura herself had slept through the entire midnight episode, and had no idea about what happened between the wizard and their host. Fai was only too happy to keep it that way, and had acted as if he was mildly disappointed that she wasn't joining them for breakfast. The others had accepted this as far as he could tell, save for Kurogane, who shot him a look that said he was overdoing it. That made three people (well, two people and one white thing) who could see through him. The situation was getting a little out of hand—he would need to be more careful.

"This is the shopping district," Rand announced, pointing at a veritable forest of tall buildings which looked to be made up entirely of glass and metal frames. They looked as if the slightest impact would cause them to shatter into a billion shards. Noting their incredulity, Rand smirked. "Glass is cheap, and looks flashy. That's all anybody cares about. But they don't usually collapse… not unless they receive a stiff impact or get struck by lightning.

"And how often does that happen?" queried Kurogane in a low growl.

"Oh, not more than once or twice a week," he replied lightly, and then when Syaoran looked seriously ill, he laughed. "Joking. Seriously, they're hardier than they look. We haven't had one collapse in more than eight years now, so don't worry." His voice was reassuring.

"Uh, okay," replied Syaoran, looking decidedly un-reassured.

They drove through the shopping district, Rand playing tour guide and pointing out anything important, and then entered the government district where the various dignitaries resided and had their offices. At the end of the street stood a tall building which Fai recognized instantly as the one the rebels had invaded in Alaya's dream the previous night.

"That's the assembly building," Rand said, gesturing with his open hand. "It's the main structure that houses all of the conferences which decide the fate of this country." He drove around to the back of the building, and pointed to a large metal scaffold, with vertical pole standing at the top an a few chairs. There was a ramp that lead up to it, and the entire thing was built on top of a natural hill, but it was mostly mud at that point.

"That," he said gravely, "Is Execution Hill. That's where enemies of the state face the firing squad."

Sakura shivered, and Syaoran instinctively clasped her hand. Fai wondered what—or who—she could see there.

"Passing over _that_ morbid topic…" Fai hinted and Rand, catching his meaning, immediately started prattling about something to do with the difficulties of building foundations in such soft land as Dumault. They were really something of a swampy, rainforest country until the forced industrialization.

The temperature of Sakura's hands slowly rose back to a healthy level as they drove further away from Execution Hill, and the rain slowly let up until a little patch of blue sky peaked through the dense clouds here and there.

They went to a small restaurant on the corner of a street for lunch, and the world-hopping travelers were able to witness the deterioration of Dumault's culture firsthand. Syaoran found himself staring in a kind of sick fascination at the four people typing away on laptops, and at everyone else, text-messaging, or eating their meal without talking to the people around them.

The five of them (well, six including Mokona, who was doing a not-very-convincing stuffed animal impression) sat at a table that was partially hidden by a potted plant. The food was too strongly flavored and greasy, and Rand had apparently run out of tour-guidey things to say, so the meal was a little uncomfortable. After a few minutes of Fai and Sakura carrying on a conversation that really didn't make sense to any of the others, Rand excused himself to take a call.

"Sense anything?" grunted Kurogane. Mokona made a face of deep concentration.

"Nope," it wined in exasperation. "The feather's aura could be within a few meters and I wouldn't know it. The aura of this world is so intense and distorted that it's blocking everything else out!"

"Maybe we should try walking around and searching manually," Syaoran suggested. "If we split up, someone could keep Rand occupied while the others could search without having to explain what we're looking for."

As it turned out, however, keeping Rand occupied wasn't necessary.

"I have to go back," he announced as he rushed back in, looking harassed. "Something's come up."

"We'd like to take a stroll and have a look around at walking speed, if that's all right," Fai mentioned with perfect continuity. "Perhaps you could return and pick us up later?"

Rand turned out to be in such a big hurry that anything they suggested was just fine, and so Syaoran and Sakura walked off down one street. Fai strolled and Kurogane sauntered down a different one, the latter looking decidedly unhappy over how the groups had been split up, and trying to think of a good reason not to fling the manju-bun off of his head, where it was making a sort of nest in his hair.

"What's the point of them going off in a different direction without that white thing to sense where the feather?" he growled, tugging on his tie. He and Fai were both dressed in posh black business suits from the rebels' disguise cache, so really they did look natural together, just as Sakura and Syaoran looked natural walking side by side in uniforms from the same school.

"Until the truant officer sees them," laughed Fai, imagining Syaoran facing off against some fat man in a police uniform to protect Sakura's honor for not being in a school that they didn't actually attend.

Sakura and Syaoran were actually having a rather good time sightseeing… er, searching, through the city. They soon got out of the forest of grey and silver and into what seemed to be an older section. The buildings were made out of more diverse materials, and many of them were decorated with colorful graffiti. The people there wore shabbier clothes, which was at least a little different from the boring blacks and grays in vogue in the city.

Once in a while, a child would actually be seen playing on the sidewalk, though it was quite rare; Sakura counted three in an hour.

The further they walked, the poorer the area appeared, until they were traversing a neighborhood that could only be described as "slums" or "badlands." The buildings became more decrepit and the people looked less and less refined as well as more and more dangerous. There were knots of men and women in shabby, torn clothing, drinking who-knows-what out of bottles and playing with switchblades or hitting one another for no apparent reason besides entertainment.

Sakura was about to suggest that they turn around and go back the way they had come when Syaoran suddenly stopped in his tracks, causing her to run into his shoulder.

"Sorry," he murmured, every line of him tense and alert.

"What is it?" she whispered, startled by her friend's sudden halt.

"We're being ambushed," he replied so quietly that he was almost inaudible. Sakura drew closer to him, casting her eyes around and noticing for the first time the number of people in the area that seemed to have nothing better to do than stare at them.

"Those are some spiffy uniforms you got on there," drawled a man—no, Sakura realized as she looked closer at him, a _boy_—as he sauntered closer, hands in his jeans pockets. Actually, the princess noticed that most of the people closing slowly in on them were teenagers, and most of them were wearing either jeans, denim skirts, headbands or other accessories.

"Are you in the rebellion?" She ventured, taking a step to the side so she wasn't hiding so much behind Syaoran. "You dress like them, so—"

"Are you a spy?" snapped a girl's voice, cutting Sakura's dialogue off sharply and causing her to turn her face and gasp at what she saw.

"Yuzuriha?" she exclaimed. Sure enough, the slender, dark-haired girl they had encountered in Oto and other countries was facing them, wearing a denim jacket over her school uniform top, which she had torn off at the bottom of her ribcage to reveal her midriff. Her eyes widened and she caught her breath.

"So you _are_ spies!" accused a boy who Sakura didn't recognize. "You must have come from the government to find our hideout, didn't you!"

"We aren't here for anything of the sort," placated Syaoran, surreptitiously sliding his feet into a fighting stance and edging in front of Sakura. "We're just out looking for a lost possession, that's all."

"A likely story," hissed Yuzuriha. "Then how did she know my name if we've never met?"

"I saw you in a picture once," Sakura invented, raising her hands in front of her a little like a gesture of surrender. "You were with a bunch of other girls, and one of them is a friend of mine."

'I didn't know the princess could lie like that,' Syaoran thought as Yuzuriha frowned.

"What's your friend's name?" she asked, more inquisitively and with less antagonism.

"Yuki," Sakura responded, blurting out the first common name she could think of and hoping Yuzuriha had enough friends that this could fly. To her utter relief, the other girl actually looked pacified.

"Oh, you must mean Yuki-chan," she mused aloud. "Yeah, I guess she might have a picture of me lying around; she's so camera-happy."

"Come _on_ Yuzuriha," moaned the boy who had originally spoken. "You don't think that's too convenient? How gullible _are_ you?" Yuzuriha looked confused for a moment, and then shock and anger flashed across her face.

"You're right Sean," she agreed. "I can't believe she took me in!"

'Neither can I,' thought Sakura. '_I_ didn't even think I was believable.'

"Time to learn why you shouldn't mess with the Ryujin*!" bellowed a girl who looked kind of like a young version of Asura-o. True to the nature of dimensional parallels, there was a boy beside her who looked like a fifteen year old Yasha-o. Asura raised what looked like a closet pole over her head and charged forward, bringing it down like a staff on Syaoran's quick cross-hand guard. He bunched his arm muscles and propelled the makeshift weapon back along its former path, forcing Asura to take a step back.

Yasha darted into the opening she left and swung his fist at Syaoran's head. The brown-haired traveler caught his attacker's hand and launched him over his shoulder to land on his back gasping for air—though not in Sakura's direction, of course.

He had barely returned to a ready stance when Yuzuriha, Asura and Sean all rushed forward at once from different directions.

Syaoran was at a loss this time; his mind whirled around trying to think of a way to stop them without hurting Sakura. She was way to close to him, so if he dodged the wrong way, she'd get pummeled, and if he didn't pay attention to where he was striking he could easily kick her by mistake.

Yuzuriha reached him first, with a shorter pole in her hand like a wooden sword. He disarmed her and swept her legs out from under her, just in time to slam her short pole into Asura's ribs. He turned to face Sean, but the boy wasn't there.

"What the—ugh!" Another stave cracked across the back of his head and Syaoran was unconscious before he hit the pavement.

"Syaoran!" Sakura screamed, trying to kneel beside him and tend to his bleeding head, but she was yanked roughly back up by someone's fingers tangled through her hair.

"Gettin' 'em pretty young, aren't they?" remarked the guy holding onto her.

"We don't work for the government," she protested. "We're not even from this country! Like we told you, we just came here looking for something I lost! Please, let us go!"

"That's exactly what a real spy would say," Yuzuriha snarled, getting back to her feet and rubbing her leg where she had landed. "You're not going to take me in twice, you baby-faced little liar!"

Yuzuriha raised a hand to strike Sakura, and the latter raised her arms to protect her face just as a familiar voice bellowed an order from somewhere off to the princess's left.

"Stop!" it commanded authoritatively. "Yuzuriha, Hatori, what are you doing?"

**A/N: Hey everyone! Once again, I'd like to extend a big thank-you to everyone who has stuck with this thing, and to those who read—and subscribed and reviewed—while it was on hold! Arigato Gozaimashita! **

***Ryujin: "Ryu" is dragon, and "-jin" is people or nationals (American is "Americajin," for example, and Japanese—from "Nihon," or Japan—are Nihonjin.) Therefore, "Ryujin" means "People from Dragon," or in this case, "People of the Dragon."**

**Now for two random author's notes which you can all feel free to skip if they're not interesting to you!**

**A.**** I like the songs "**_**Pyromania**_**," by Cascada, "**_**Dynamite**_**," by Tiao Cruz, and "**_**Firework**_**," by Katy Perry. I made a playlist called "Inferno," for myself, but there isn't much on it. Those three all fit the criteria: 1- not really based on love or romance (can't we sing about anything **_**else**_** in this culture?) 2- Fast-paced and energetic; bouncy, and 3- kind of electronic. Can anyone else recommend songs to me that are sort of fire-themed for "Inferno?" Oh, and I generally try to avoid profanity in songs if I can. :)**

**B.**** I posted a Code Geass fic called "Of Curiosity and Cats." If anybody had seen all of Code Geass (the fic has **_**major spoilers**_** for the ending of the anime!) feel free to check it out! **


	7. Playing the Hero

**Rie Kiyotaka was technically a doctor. She had worked as a nurse practitioner at a pediatric clinic while putting herself through medical school, but now that she had her doctorate, she found herself doing a job that was more like an assistant or a maid.**

**Her job description included any and every job the wealthy Nottingham family's daughter needed doing, from making tea and running errands to delivering death-threats in the middle of the night. She was paid handsomely—not to mention that all of her student loans were suddenly covered—but really, she cared about the girl like a little sister, and would have loyally helped her out with anything. It was tea she was busy with at present, and she made her way carefully up the stairs to Beth's room so as not to spill.**

**That affection was the reason why, when she opened the door to the heiress's bedroom, she found herself profoundly upset to see her charge flinging her possessions at the far wall in a rage.**

"_**What**_** is going on?" she demanded, trying not to sound as horrified as she felt. Elizabeth Nottingham had always been mellow and well-behaved, from the time she could walk to her seventeen-year-old present.**

"**Do you," Beth whispered, each word drenched in malice and frustration, "have **_**any**_** idea how infuriatingly hard it is to get two men—**_**already walking around,**_** mind you, and through an **_**unfamiliar city**_** no less!—to move two-hundred-some odd meters in the direction I want them to go?"**

_Playing the Hero_

Sakura let her eyes, which she had been squeezing shut a moment before, open a little to peek at the newcomer, and they widened to their full extent when she recognized him.

"Ryuo," she breathed, thankfully remembering to keep her volume low. Knowing the names of people she had never met had gotten her in enough trouble for one day.

"They're spies for the government," replied the boy—Hatori—who had hold of Sakura's hair.

"Are you blind?" Ryuo barked irritably. "They're a couple of kids! Anyway, Nokoru'll have all your heads if he finds out you're assaulting and manhandling a lady." Hatori grudgingly released Sakura's hair and Yuzuriha lowered her fist looking a little sheepish. Sakura knelt behind Syaoran, examining his wound, though she knew she couldn't do much to help him.

"This is the sort of thing we're trying to _avoid_," Ryuo hissed, with the air of one who has said the same thing many times and not gotten the desired response. "Princess D'Arc is probably on her way here right now, and if we don't shape up, she's never going to let us join! She said she'd only consider letting us come if she judged we were mature enough; _does this seem mature to you?_"

"Nope, not mature at all, squirt," replied Alaya suddenly, making Sakura turn sharply and gasp. She must have come up silently behind them all while they were preoccupied with Ryuo. Her long hair was pulled back in a braid and she wore jeans and a long denim trench coat. Gone was the royal beauty from the previous night; in her place stood a very businesslike person who looked profoundly disgusted.

"P-princess Alaya!" she, Yuzuriha and Ryuo stammered all at the same time.

"There's a good explanation for this!" Ryuo continued hastily.

"_Impress me_," demanded Alaya coldly. Ryuo opened and closed his mouth a few times, and then let out a slow sigh, staring at the ground. Then, he snapped his eyes up to meet the princess's hostile black ones.

"There isn't," he confessed flatly. "I am without excuse. I'm very sorry ma'am." He knelt down in front of her and bowed his head to the ground in contrition. Yuzuriha and Hatori also knelt, soon followed by all of the others. There were about twenty in all, and not one of them could possibly have been over eighteen.

Sakura had just enough time to feel sorry for them—after all, the versions they had met in previous worlds were all generally very nice people—when Alaya's eyes lightened to their original purple and she laughed.

"Well," she pronounced after a few hearty peals of mirth, "that was a stiff contrast! Welcome to the rebellion, People of the Dragon."

Ryuo looked up in disbelief to see Alaya extending a hand to him. He took it and moved his face toward it as though to press it to his lips, but Alaya pulled him to his feet.

"You all might not be the brightest lot," she remarked, "but if you have the strength to admit when you're wrong, you're grown up enough for me. Now it looks like it's going to start raining again, so let's get inside. You and you," she gestured at two of the more burly guys, "carry him," she indicated Syaoran.

It did indeed start raining again; the last few kids to enter the heavily graffiti-decorated building Ryuo directed them too got soaked by the sudden downpour. The interior had a rather eclectic decorating style, Sakura thought, trying not to use the words "a mess." There were eight or nine sofas, none of which matched any of the others, and a plethora of pillows from little decorative ones with tearing embroidery to big thick body-pillows with the stuffing sticking out at the ripped corners. There were rugs scattered all over the wooden floor, and the walls had been painted as some sort of patchwork, like each person had picked an arbitrary color and smeared it on whatever bit of wall suited their fancy.

At one spot on the wall there hung a banner made out of—take a _wild_ guess—denim, with a picture painted on it of a large red—guess again—dragon. Syaoran was laid out on one of the sofas, and Sakura sat gingerly on the arm, trying to clean the blood from his face with the pocket handkerchief that had come with the uniform she was wearing.

Alaya talked with Ryuo and Yuzuriha about a number of things, and Sakura was able to pick up from their conversation that the Ryujin were basically a teenagers' gang who had wanted to join the official rebel forces for many years. Apparently Alphonse had objected originally, saying that a bunch of middle-school kids and a few high-school freshmen weren't going to do anyone any good, and would get killed if they went anywhere near real battle.

Alaya had disagreed, arguing that even as kids they could still be useful. They would be seen as less suspicious, so they could carry messages through the city. Hawks couldn't be used too frequently, as they drew too much attention. But at the time of the original conversation, Alphonse had had the final word. Without him around, Alaya had to start making decisions herself.

"This is actually my first act as heir apparent," she confessed to Sakura after she finished talking to Ryuo and came over to have a look at Syaoran's head. "Until now, I just sat back and let Rand do whatever he thought best, and if I had to make any decisions, I just went ahead with whatever Al would've done."

"Why are you suddenly doing this, then?" Sakura asked shyly. Alaya wasn't usually this vocal, and her odd mood-swings were difficult to keep track of.

"Oh, just a dream I had last night," Alaya murmured. "Syaoran will be fine; he doesn't seem to have a concussion and the injury isn't all that bad. He'll have a nasty headache when he wakes up, but that's all. It's not even bleeding anymore, see?"

"Thank goodness," Sakura breathed.

"Alaya!" exclaimed yet another familiar voice. Rand strode in, dripping wet and looking frazzled.

"What's up?" Alaya greeted her harassed subordinate.

"For once in your life," he panted angrily, "_warn_ me when you're going to go somewhere! Kori was sure you'd disappeared again!"

"Oh, oops," she chuckled. "My bad. Today I made an alliance, by the way."

"'After the fact' doesn't count," Rand snorted irritably.

O-0-O

"**Oh no…"**

**Rie looked up from a book she had been reading as Beth's fingers froze on the keys.**

"**What's happening?" she asked, pausing on her way out the door with the empty teacup.**

"**She's hit the final stages already, and she's being way too conspicuous about it," Beth replied with a sigh, putting her hand over her eyes and shoving her messy brown bangs off of her forehead. "THEY have nearly found her. This is all happening much too soon—I can't seem to orchestrate events any differently! At this rate, she'll be disposed of before I can get a word in edgewise…**

**Oh well," Beth chuckled humorlessly. "I suppose she'll have to learn some time though. This is what comes of 'living,' my Aaliyah. Rie, hand me that box, will you?"**

**Rie placed the requested item in her mistress's hands, and felt her eyes widen as the lid came open to reveal a piercing white light within.**

"**But isn't that one of…" she whispered, but Beth was already typing again, the glowing feather tucked absentmindedly behind her ear for reasons the Nottingham family maid could not fathom.**

O-0-O

"Mekyo!" Mokona squealed. "There it is! It's really, really close! I feel it!"

"Which direction?" demanded the big ninja, instinctively looking around as if the feather would be sitting in a gutter or something in plain sight.

"That way!" Mokona exclaimed, pointing with both an arm and an ear.

"Well then, let's go find it, shall we?" Fai suggested, and with a growl from his companion at his obvious statement, they ran off down a side street.

O-0-O

"**Bait," Rie guessed, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice. It wasn't her place to say whether Beth's use of the feather as the proverbial "carrot" was ethical or not.**

"**It's better than controlling their actions directly, isn't it?" the young writer commented as though she had given the matter some serious thought. "Anyway, it works better. I'm thinking of posting some pictures of Aaliyah on deviantart, by the way…"**

"**Try to focus, Beth," Rie quipped.**

O-0-O

"Mmmmmm…" Mokona moaned in frustration, "It keeps moving; it won't sit still! It's coming from the left again… Now down that alleyway! Quick Kuro-pu! Hurry; it's getting fainter!"

O-0-O

"**That's mean, Beth," Rie commented, brushing her fingers across the girl's forehead out of mindless habit. It was a little warm; nothing to be concerned about. Beth ran a little hot to begin with.**

"**No, it's quite necessary," she replied. "I wouldn't want them to smell a set-up, after all."**

O-0-O

"What the…" Alaya murmured, standing up as if lifted by some unseen force and walking shakily towards the door.

"Alaya-chan," Sakura called after her, "what's wrong?"

"Someone's calling me," the rebel princess breathed. "There's danger… someone I care about is going to be terribly hurt…" Sakura stood up and began to move hesitantly toward her. Syaoran—who had awoken a few minutes prior and been given the "short version" of what had happened—immediately rose and stood close by her side in case something dangerous was happening. Something was strange about the girl in front of them; she appeared to be obscured by something, like a warm golden light from her back.

"No, not now; not again!" Rand bellowed, launching himself forward to grab Alaya's elbow, but before he could, she bounded out the door and streaked off through the rain, visible through the silver haze for far longer than she should have been thanks to the light.

O-0-O

"**Too soon," Beth groaned, "way too soon for her to be at that level!"**

"**Whose voice did she hear?" Rie asked.**

"**Dumault's," Beth replied soberly. "It… **_**he**_** wanted to warn his beloved of impending danger."**

"**Beloved?" Rie quoted in confusion.**

"**Aaliyah's the 'Earth's Beloved,'" Beth explained. "'Earth' here meaning 'planet' or 'nature.' I'll tell you the rest later. For now, would you mind very much making some coffee? I feel the onslaught of a very distracting caffeine headache."**

**Puzzled, Rie left the room, wondering what **_**other**_** traits Beth had hidden inside of her magnum opus that she had neglected to mention.**

O-0-O

Alaya's heartbeat throbbed through her body, a pulsing rhythm so powerful she feared the blood would explode out of her veins and soak the street she was practically flying across. She wasn't sure when she had abandoned running for leaping, but somehow she was staying airborne for a long period at a time, held aloft by some unseen force.

The pouring rain was bone-chillingly cold, but for some reason she felt uncomfortably warm, like there was a flame at her back or something.

_This way,_ the voice inside her breathed. _Hurry up! Soon it will be too late!_

O-0-O

"**In more ways than one," Beth murmured to the empty room behind her as she squinted at the computer screen and reminded herself for the umpteenth time that she really needed a visit to the optometrist.**

O-0-O

"What's that light up ahead?" Fai queried aloud, and then after squinting to see through the white curtain of rain, his eyes widened. "Uh-oh," he muttered, keeping his tone carefully jovial. "It's the 'Ice Princess…'"

"You really don't like her for some reason," Kurogane remarked, "do you?"

"There might be some truth to that," Fai replied with a smile. "She isn't very friendly, is she? Anyway, with our princess being so sweet, the contrast is just too harsh. Alaya never stood a chance!"

"I didn't ask you to compare her to Sakura," the big ninja growled. "I was commenting on the fact that you seem to dislike her; and you don't openly dislike anybody. It seems fishy to me."

'Great,' thought Fai. '_Just_ what I need right now.'

O-0-O

The cold rain finally made its way through Alaya's brain and made her aware of where she was and what she was doing. She pulled up short and slowed to a walk. How hair-brained of her, to suddenly dash out into the pouring rain after thinking she heard a voice. It had barely even been a voice; more like an odd wailing of the wind through the rooftops or something.

She didn't even notice as the fabric of time and space behind her tore open to reveal an ellipse-shaped gap in the universe.

O-0-O

"That's…!" Kurogane whispered under his breath as he beheld the hole in reality; the same kind of hole through which a sword had once been thrust into the undeserving breast of his helpless mother.

Fai also recognized that kind of hole, but he didn't say anything. He just sprinted ahead as fast as he could.

His only thought was 'not her.' She, who was so familiar and yet whom he'd never met before; he couldn't let that person take her!

"_I can't just stand here and do nothing while they haul you away to who-knows-where!"_ The déjà vu smothered and overwhelmed him. Who had said that?

As a black hand reached out from the hole in the universe, his body moved without his mind's conscious decision and flung Alaya to the pavement behind him, interposing himself between her and danger. He couldn't let them take her; what had she done to bring on Fei Wong's wrath?

"_So they were _born_. Is that a crime? You're all complete idiots!"_ It was a girl's voice, and from a very old memory. But that was all he could figure out before the hand, apparently made of some sort of black magical smoke, enveloped him and he was rendered unconscious from the spell it contained.

'I was never the type to play the hero,' he thought distractedly as the smoke seemed to enter and fog up his brain. 'This girl is _really_ messing with my head…'

O-0-O

Alaya's back and left shoulder were in a lot of pain from where she had hit the ground, but she still had the wherewithal to look up as Fai was wrapped in darkness and pulled through a hole that certainly hadn't been there two seconds ago.

"What the…?" she exclaimed, struggling to rise to her feet as she heard Kurogane cussing and drawing his sword from somewhere to her right.

She reached out towards where Fai's hand had been before it was obscured by the black smoke, but before she could take hold of anything, it all vanished.

"NO!" she screamed, still reaching, every fiber of her being taut with the desperate hope of catching him, pulling him back, or even being pulled in after him. She had to find him; he had just been here, hadn't he? **She had to go to him!**

"**Oh **_**damn**_**… Beth whispered as she felt the force of Aaliyah's thoughts rush into her like the river in Lord of the Rings when Treebeard set it free.**

**O-0-O**

**Rie opened the door gingerly, trying not to disturb the over-full cup of coffee she was carrying.**

"**Beth?" she called softly, looking around the little bedroom. The computer was still on and the document her mistress had been working on was open, the cursor flashing on the page awaiting the next keystrokes. Her slippers were even still there under the desk where she always shed them when she sat down.**

**But the girl was gone.**


	8. What Comes of Playing the Hero

**Rie sighed as she let her fingers rest on the keys of Beth's laptop computer. She was a fairly fast typist, but it had still taken her twenty or thirty minutes to even find the right document. In "story time," that could be hours.**

"**Ugh, Beth," she groaned, "this is what comes of basing a character off of yourself…"**

_What Comes of Playing the Hero_

Fai felt as if every individual cell of his body weighed as much as a horse as he slowly clawed his way up the slope in his mind towards consciousness. He had been carelessly dumped on a cold, hard surface; his hand trapped beneath him was numb, and his legs were at odd angles. With herculean effort, he rolled over onto his back, pulled his nerveless hand onto his chest, and started trying to rub life back into it. He cracked his eyes open, but the action was pointless. His surroundings were as dark as despair itself.

He sniffed the air and recoiled. Wherever he was reeked of sweat and blood, excrement and unwashed bodies. It was the stench of decay; of death. He steeled himself, and took another breath. By the difference in airflow, he could tell that he was in a small room with only three walls. To the left, where the fourth wall ought to have been, was a large open space. He sat up, which was a mistake because it made his head spin, and crawled toward the open space. With a resounding "clang," (which was in reality not that loud, but it seemed that way in the dense silence) his forehead came into contact with a metal bar.

Rubbing his head and cursing his stupidity, he made a mental catalogue of his surroundings. The penetrating darkness and total lack of fresh air told him that he was almost certainly underground, and far from being in just any room, he was in a dungeon. The shape of the "room" suggested many more cells like this around the periphery of the large area. After another few moments of straining his senses, he became aware that he was not alone. He could hear the sounds of other people breathing and shifting, and a few people crying. Other prisoners, he surmised.

"Where the _hell_ am I?" he demanded a bit shakily, a bit angrily, of the inky blackness before him. Silence roared in his ears as everyone froze for a moment, and then a shaky female voice with traces of an accent he couldn't quite place answered him.

"**You're in the dungeon of Fei Wang Reed's fortress,"** it said hesitantly, from some three or four cells to his right. The sound echoed, giving him a better perception of how vast the void past the bars was.

'You idiot!' he mentally berated himself. 'This is what you get for trying to play the hero…'

O-0-O

"Whaddaya mean, 'we're not going'?" roared Alaya, Syaoran and Kurogane in one voice, making the Great Hall reverberate with their enraged cry, and forcing some of the more delicate listeners (Sakura and Kori, to name a few) to have to cover their ears.

"I didn't say we weren't going to rescue him," Rand explained with an air of forced calm. "I just said we weren't going to do it right this second, so put your weapons away and meet in the war-room for a council."

"_Fai has been CAPTURED_," Kurogane bellowed, "_and you want us to sit around and discuss it in a COMMITTIEE?" _

"We don't have time for a council!" Syaoran continued, banging his fist on the high table and splintering the wood. Sakura nodded emphatically, and Alaya turned to scan the crowd of people behind them.

"We have to act quickly. Where is he now, Arashi?" she demanded, eye's searching for the raven-haired psychic. "Arashi?"

Arashi was sitting curled up on top of one of the tables, hands pressed against her temples and eyes screwed shut as if in pain. Sorata was standing at her elbow looking like he had no idea what to do. In a blur of speed, Alaya was standing in front of her.

"Arashi, what is it? What's wrong?"

"They vanished!" she wailed. "I tracked them as far as Belgese, and then Fai and a whole truck full of black-suits just… vanished! Out of nowhere, just…poof!" she made a 'poof' gesture with her hands, then folded her arms around her knees and buried her face in them.

Kurogane grimaced. "Feh, she's been wrong before," he remarked. "What's to stop her being wrong now?"

Alaya shook her head contemplatively.

"She was not wrong," She murmured, and then more loudly, "Rand, Kori, Kurogane, Syaoran, Sakura, I am calling an emergency council. Go to the war room immediately. Everyone else, prepare everything you can for an immediate evacuation. Sorata, you're in charge. I want the children and the elderly to head for Brighthaven castle before the sun rises, with a battalion of guards and enough provisions for a long siege. Arashi, I want you to get out some maps and pinpoint the exact spot where they vanished. The time would be nice too. You all,"—here she gestured to those whose names she had called—"come with me."

"Hey!" exclaimed Kurogane, jogging to catch up with the princess's long, purposeful strides as she made her way toward the war-room, "I thought you were the one who said we have to act quickly!"

"That, my pugnacious friend," she replied tersely, "is precisely what we are doing."

O-0-O

Fai's wrists itched from the ropes that bound them behind his back as he sat against the wall of a room that was not all that different from his cell. He had been brought there by Black Suits and left to contemplate what might come next.

"Fai D. Flourite," A very familiar voice enunciated carefully from above and to his left. He looked up, his eyes meeting a pair of blue ones veiled by spectacles that he knew well.

"Dr. Kyle Rondart," Fai replied with a smirk. "Of course, it would be you. Did you get demoted to torture-chamber monitor after one too many screw ups?" Kyle smiled back, and his face had a cruel edge to it that made the expression deadly terrifying.

O-0-O

"Syaoran, Sakura, Kurogane," Alaya barked, her words resounding in the comparative silence of the empty, glass-walled room, "tell me the truth now; your friend's life depends on it."

"What truth?" Syaoran asked, confused and impatient. They had been made to sit at an oval-shaped table of some black, glass-like substance, but moments after taking his seat he had stood back up again.

"You lot are from an alternate dimension, aren't you? Another world," She accused coolly. "You are searching for feathers that belong to Sakura, without which, she will surely die. In addition, Fai has some sort of magical power, correct?"

"How do you know this?" Kurogane rumbled, surprisingly the only calm one among them as Syaoran and Sakura gasped and Mokona squealed in panic.

"I," Alaya started out confidently, but then faltered. "Where did I…?"

O-0-O

'**Uh-oh,' Rie thought. 'Beth "gave" her the information without ever figuring out where she was to have gotten it! Having the author trapped inside of the story makes for a really messy plotline…' She paused in her reading of the words now typing themselves across the screen to look up at the ceiling and rest her straining eyes. Though their author was gone, it seemed that the laptop was still recording everything that happened. **

**Of course, it was confusing that it kept spelling Aaliyah's name wrong, (and was it supposed to be Fei "Wang," or Fei "Wong?") and that distracted Rie even more from what she was supposed to be doing.**

O-0-O

Kori ignored Alaya's confusion—in fact it was almost as though she didn't notice it—and started typing at a keyboard that seemed to materialize right out of the table's surface. It was evident that this room was way more modernized than the rest of Castle Érail.

"None of you appear in the system without major discrepancies," she explained. "At Alaya's request, I located a 'Kurogane Suwa,' but you two could not possibly be the same person." As she spoke, she hit a button and a picture of a man who looked exactly like Kurogane appeared on one of the walls, which apparently doubled as a screen. "He passed away, you see, just before Alaya was born, almost twenty years ago. Had he lived, he'd be in his eighties. The Kurogane in this room is in his thirties."

"Suwa was a member of our organization, actually," Alaya added. "He was my father's most prized assassin, the "Serpent of Death."

Kori's fingers flew over the keyboard two more walls lit up and became screens, displaying images of Sakura and Syaoran.

"Sakura Kinomoto and Li Syaoran both live in the neighboring country, Belgese. They are the same age exactly, both born on the first day of the fourth month. They were married when they were both twenty-two. Syaoran is a professor of archaeology at a university, and Sakura is a stay-at-home mother; well, as much as she can be when her husband is constantly taking her and their children gallivanting around the world to archaeological digs. Sakura is much like his assistant on these trips, or perhaps I should say, 'sidekick.'" Here she giggled a little and pulled up an image on the fourth wall of a large group of people in matching yellow jumpsuits wearing sour expressions.

"These two have reportedly put more people behind bars than the computer even knows about. When interviewed by the press, Professor Syaoran said, 'I'm just shocked that there are so many people out there who want to use historical artifacts for nefarious purposes. Those artifacts belong in a museum for everyone to enjoy!"

O-0-O

"**What is he, Indiana Jones?" Rie groused. **

'**I'm no use here,' she thought desperately. 'I haven't done this in **_**decades**_**; I probably don't even possess the power any more." She sat back in the office chair, clutching a small, faded pink journal in her left hand like it was her mistress's life itself.**

O-0-O

Dr. Kyle's day was getting worse by the second. It had started off badly with burnt coffee and a hangover, and now he had to deal with this dratted wizard. But if he didn't accomplish his master's will, he'd be stuck as secretary of interrogations for the rest of his career!

"Is that the best you can do?" The wizard spat, his clear blue eyes narrowed in hate even though there was a wide grin plastered across his face. That sight—along with the fact that venom was dripping off of his honeyed tone—created quite a disturbing and interesting impact on Kyle. "Using such a low level spell… It seriously makes me wonder about your magical capabilities."

Fei Wang's demoted henchman felt a low growl forming in the back of his throat at what the magician seemed to be implying, but Fai gave him no time to recover as he kept pressing his verbal advantage.

"Perhaps failing missions was not the only reason why you got demoted," he suggested with a rather vindictive grin. "Maybe your inferior magic was what made your master rethink his decision to give important matters to you. Or maybe—"

"Shut up!" Kyle snarled, hitting the man before he could stop himself. He had never had to resort to physical violence before, but this man was pushing all his pressure points and still somehow managing to resist his spell! How was he doing that without magic of his own, anyway? His mind couldn't possibly be that powerful…

Unless of course it had to do with the fact that he _himself_ was distracted. 'Hm,' he thought, slightly impressed. 'Quite the fox I have here; and I thought he was just suicidal.'

"Or," Fai continued in that abrasively cheerful voice of his, disregarding the blood that was dripping gently down from his split lip to stain his collar crimson, "Or it was the lack of your magical prowess that resulted in your failed missions _in the first place_."

The blow had done its damage though. The blonde's smile appeared a little strained now, Kyle noted, probably from the mental strain of resisting the spell, which had resumed its attacks with much greater force now that its caster was more focused.

"It seems you are out of tricks," Kyle said silkily as he began to weave another spell, this one designed to strengthen his previous spell and bind any magic that the wizard might, in the throes of the first, unleash. That man would be begging for mercy before long.

"So it would seem," he retorted pleasantly, grinning widely just as Kyle's spell finally took effect, so that the smile was suddenly contorted into an expression of anguish. The henchman observed Fai's eyes go wide, staring at something no one else could see, and absentmindedly checked his bonds as he began to strain against them. The magic was working effectively, it seemed. He studied the mage's face as the expressions on it kept on transitioned rapidly between one of distress and torment to one of strain and anger. He was still fighting it?

Not wanting to fail this assignment and his last chance for redemption, Kyle reinforced the spells with one more, wondering idly how long it would take for his prisoner's mind to be pliable enough to extract the information he needed. So what if he wasn't as strong as the prisoner when it came to magic? At least he had the brains to back up what little he had.

The blonde's face twisted with agony from the spells, and Kyle patted himself on the back a bit, wondering how long it would take for the man's mind to be pliable enough to extract the information he needed. Why exactly they were so desperate to get their hands on the Dumault princess was a mystery to him; all he knew was that Alaya had been a part of some bigger plan, and that after failing to retrieve her, the wizard was supposed to do just as well to bring her in.

"Although," he murmured aloud to no one, "if we're torturing him to get her attention and force her to come rescue him, how can _she_ possibly know about it? It doesn't make any sense..." The empty dungeon room remained mind-crushingly silent in response. Then Fai started to scream.

O-0-O

"Fai's story is similar to Kurogane's," Alaya continued. "He and several other members of his family worked for my father. He also passed away about ten years ago, at the age of eighty-three. In conclusion, there's no way for you lot to exist here unless you're some sort of inter-dimensional parallel."

"What does any of this have to do with Fai getting captured?" demanded Kurogane tersely.

"Oh! I see what you're getting at!" Rand exclaimed suddenly. Alaya nodded and laid it out for the travelers.

"The reason Arashi can't sense him is because he's no longer in this world. Also, the reason why there's no record of a _country_ as technologically advanced as the one That Man claimed to come from is that there _isn't_ one. That Man is from another world, and that's where he's taking all the people he captures, including Fai.

Including Alphonse," she finished after a pause. "Arashi wasn't wrong when she said he was gone from this world; she just didn't know what she was sensing.

O-0-O

Beth ran her fingers through her hair and paced around and around her cell in the darkness that had claimed the space around her after the Black Suits had left with Fai. There had to be a way out of this mess. If Aaliyah was strong enough now to bring _her_ here inadvertently, she _had_ to be able to use her power to come and rescue them, hadn't she?

She pulled up short in her stride as the far-away sound of screaming met her ears.

Whirling, she ran to the bars at the front of the cell and strained her eyes against the crushing darkness, as if she thought she could see him where he was, probably rooms and floors away.

Sliding to her knees, she gripped the bars of her cell until her hands seemed to weld themselves to the iron and whispered every filthy word she knew.

"**What have I done?" **she sobbed quietly.** "Is this because of what I wrote?"**

O-0-O

"Fai," the blonde wizard cried brokenly. "Fai, no…"

"Soon," Kyle murmured, the cruel smile still adorning his face. "Soon your mind will bend to my will, and you will let me in. I wonder how much of this it will take." He sat down on a chair the Black Suits had brought for him and observed the mage as he thrashed around on the floor, tears streaming from his closed eyes.

"No, don't!" he choked. "Stop it please! Stop hurting him; take me instead! _Please, take me instead!_"

"We will, Yuui," Kyle sneered. "We will."


	9. An Obvious Solution

**Rie's eyes were burning with unshed tears of frustration. She hadn't been able to do this since she was a child; if it hadn't been for meeting Beth, she probably never would have even remembered that she had once done it at all! It wasn't a power adults were meant to have in the first place.**

"**While I sit here trying and failing to make a story come to life," she growled, "who knows what could be happening to Beth and Fai! Ugh! I wish there was someone else who could help me with…"**

_An Obvious Solution_

"**Aaliyah."**

Alaya's head snapped up from the small screen on the table in front of her where she had been viewing the picture of Dumault's Fai. Something was off about it, she had been thinking, almost as if even though they had the same face, it wasn't the same person behind the eyes. Perhaps that was just because it wasn't him but a dimensional parallel of him.

The travelers had been explaining for the last half hour about their (Syaoran's, she got the feeling) quest for Sakura's feathers. They had also talked about Mokona's abilities and limitations; how it could take them from one world to another but it couldn't control what world they landed on.

All of this was a bizarre topic, to be sure, and yet for some odd reason she didn't find any of it to be surprising. Why could that b—

"_**Aaliyah!"**_

The voice she had been sure was in her imagination earlier echoed through her mind again, difficult to hear, almost impossible to focus on, like it was only partly there.

"What?" she replied aloud, trying to figure out where it was coming from, or whose voice it was.

"I was saying that—" Syaoran started to reply, but the rebel princess cut him off.

"Not you, kiddo," she explained shortly. "Sorry, I think I was talking to a voice in my head."

"You're hearing voices?" Kurogane confirmed with one eyebrow raised.

"Her highness has heard voices before—" Rand began, but Alaya cut him off too.

"That was a guy's voice; this one's female," she informed them absently, looking vaguely around as if unsure what to do with her eyes, the way one sometimes does when talking on a cell phone. "Who are you?"

"**My name is Rie," Rie replied, speaking into the putty-colored microphone she had unearthed from Beth's unused electronics collection. "I need your help."**

"O-kay," Alaya replied, elongating the word to emphasize her skepticism. "The little voice in my head needs my help. That's nice. Why should I? For all I know, you're just proof that I'm bonkers, as everyone in the room seems to think from the way they're looking at me." Syaoran, Sakura and Kori had the grace to quickly avert their eyes and pretend they hadn't been staring, but Rand and Kurogane's eyebrows stayed firmly elevated, their eyes fixed on the rebel princess.

"**I need your help to save someone." Rie replied, wondering if perhaps Beth had "imparted" any other information, like her **_**own existence**_**, for example. That would make things simple, but she had a funny feeling that Beth intended to keep her own involvement a secret for as long as she could manage.**

"_Again_," Alaya growled, "why should I help you, whoever you are? I can't even see you. You could be some sort of trick, or a hallucination. Who do you want me to save anyway?"

**Rie was already in the process of hooking up the webcam that Beth used to talk to her parents (who lived and worked overseas). Luckily, the authoress had set up the rebellion's headquarters with all the information networking and hardware needed to set up a live discourse over the internet; never mind the fact that it spanned worlds. **

"**Fai D. Flourite," she replied as she plugged cables in.**

Alaya froze for a moment and her face became the perfectly controlled "Alphonse mask" she had cultivated in the past three months.

"Talk," she demanded, folding her hands and staring fixedly at the wall, not wanting to miss a single syllable.

"We have an incoming wireless transmission," Kori announced, typing away at her keyboard.

"**Have her connect to it," Rie instructed, taking a steadying breath and hoping she didn't look as flustered as she felt. Using the avatar Beth had set up so she didn't have to reveal herself defeated the entire purpose of a face-to-face conversation. Still, she didn't like letting them see her.**

**Not that she had any other options at this point.**

"Connect," Alaya commanded, and Kori hit enter, but before the picture of the raven-haired woman who appeared had finished loading itself on one of the wall screens, Alaya had fallen to her knees on the floor, clutching at her head.

**Rie cursed silently. She must have inadvertently triggered one of Aaliyah's latent powers. Just how much did Beth have to pack into this girl?**

Alaya's mind felt like it was going to explode. There wasn't enough room for the string of what sounded to her like nonsense words that were flooding into her head. She didn't have room to think or do anything, and all she could feel was terror. What was happening?

She saw through her fluttering eyelashes that she was standing up, though she could remember no conscious decision to do so. She could also see the people around her moving, their lips forming words that she couldn't hear because her brain was already trying to "hear" so much. It hurt! It hurt more than she could describe…

Her vision blurred, almost as if her surroundings were melting into a swirl of colors, and suddenly she knew what was going on. It had never hurt like this before though…

"**What's happening?" Rie asked urgently, standing up and leaning toward the computer screen. Rand, Kori; talk to me. What's going on over there?"**

Sakura was the closest, and she dashed forward to catch the other princess as she swayed dangerously. She grabbed her upper arm and around her waist, but then suddenly everything around her was twisting and distorting, sort of like…

Sort of like how it was when they traveled between dimensions.

"Fai…" she heard Alaya whisper resolutely, as if by saying his name she would be brought to him. Sakura could hear Syaoran and Kurogane shouting her name, but then everything around her was gone, and she and Alaya were flying diagonally upward through a familiar tube of multicolored lights.

O-0-O

Dr. Kyle's lunch was exceptionally tasty, he reflected as he chewed delicately on a morsel of roast beef. At least being demoted hadn't cost him decent food.

He was interrupted—for about the hundredth time, it seemed—by the wails of his prisoner in the next room. The wizard had been under the influence of the potion for quite some time, and Kyle was sure he was close to cracking. After he finished his lunch, he would try to probe the man's mind for the fifth time, and he was fairly confident he'd be successful. After all, no one withstood more than four or five mind-probes. Without using magic, it was physically impossible.

He rather wished he knew what the whole plan was, though. He knew the rebel princess was a stepping-stone to something else, but no one had bothered to inform him of what that was. Either way, he couldn't deny the deep satisfaction he had felt as he stabbed the syringe full of potion into the wizard's restrained arm and pumped its malignant contents into his victim's blood stream.

O-0-O

It was dark. The two princesses had been deposited by the bending bubble of space and time onto a stable flat surface, where they knelt, still clinging to one another. Wherever they had landed, it was completely and utterly pitch-black, without even the faintest spark of light.

"Where are we?" Sakura whispered aloud. It wasn't until they were silenced that she realized there had been voices speaking softly to one another.

"**You have five minutes,"** a female voice announced without any sort of preface or introduction, causing the two girls to strain their eyes in a pointless effort to see the speaker. **"There's a hallway. If you come towards my voice until you can't come any further and then turn left you'll find it. Fai is down that hallway. You have five minutes before they figure out you're here; less if someone sees you. Go."**

"Who—" Sakura started, but Alaya pulled her to her feet.

"Thank you," she replied curtly, fumbling forward with one hand outstretched and the other gripping Sakura's until her fingers encountered a metal bar. Without pausing to wonder what she had touched, she turned ninety degrees to her left and strode forward as quickly as she could while being careful not to trip over anything.

"**Hurry…"** the voice whispered with traces of a sob.

O-0-O

Four Black Suits stood in the stone dungeon where Fai lay bound, holding lit torches so they could observe him in case he tried anything. In their minds—feeble as they were due to their simplistic programming—this was quite unnecessary; the man curled up on the floor with tears streaming from his tightly closed eyes wasn't capable of anything.

O-0-O

'Light,' Sakura realized after what seemed like an eternity of stumbling blindly along in Alaya's wake. 'There's light up ahead.' She said nothing aloud. Regardless of whom that voice had belonged to, it had been wise to warn them about getting caught. She was soon able to discern doorways in the long hallway's walls, and the texture created by the rough black stones was visible soon after.

The light was coming from ordinary torches in brackets up ahead, invisible from further back due to the corridor's slight curve, as though the entire building was conical in shape. If that was the case though, it was a pretty big building, she realized. She hoped Fai was close.

Just then, the two girls heard the faint sound of a cry as it echoed down the stone hallway to where they stood.

"Fai," Sakura breathed, starting forward, but Alaya stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. Looking first at her companion and then down at her proffered hand, the desert princess's eyes lit upon a small hand gun that Alaya was holding out to her.

"Have you ever used one before?" she asked softly, dampening her "s" sounds to avoid being overheard. Sakura shook her head.

"Line up your target with the points here and here," she instructed, showing the sandy-haired girl what she meant as she helped her get a good grip on the pistol's handle. "Squeeze the trigger, and when in doubt, aim for the legs. You just want to incapacitate them, not kill them." Sakura nodded nervously, exceedingly grateful that she was not expected to take anyone's lives, enemy or otherwise.

The scream was repeated, and wordlessly they took off running towards its source, the rebel princess pulling a second gun from under Al's denim trench coat.

O-0-O

"Fifth time's the charm?" Kyle asked of no one as he prepared to cast his mind-entering spell once again, but just as he completed it, alarms started going off to signify an intruder had broken in through the dimensional wards.

"Keep him here; watch that he doesn't do anything," he commanded the four guards, and took off towards the control center—only to run straight into Alaya and Sakura as they came barreling around the doorframe into the room.

Alaya was the first to react, taking the strange man's legs out from under him before she lost her own balance. Sakura sprang back out of the chaos, so she had a good view of Dr. Kyle as he got back to his feet from where Alaya had tripped him and ran off down the hall.

'That's the man from Jade, and he's also the one who tried to steal my feather on Piffle!' she realized as his retreating form got smaller. Unbidden, her hands raised the gun. 'If I don't stop him,' she thought in a panic, 'he'll bring others and we'll never get Fai out!'

Her fingers tightened on the trigger.s

O-0-O

"**Oh **_**no**_**…" Rie whispered. If **_**Sakura**_** of all people managed to get a lucky shot and hit something vital…**

O-0-O

"Wow," Alaya pronounced with a whistle. "That was pretty dang impressive for a newbie. You plugged him right through the calf at a hundred meters, and with that curving wall in the way; good job!"

"Uh," Sakura whimpered, letting her gun hand drop shakily to her side, "thanks?" The two girls were silent for a moment as they surveyed the distant figure of their bleeding adversary as he lay against the stone wall and screamed, a stream of obscenities flying from his lips like daggers.

"He'll live," Alaya assured her, seeing her fellow princess's distress. She listened with mild interest to the colorful words the man was flinging in their direction. "No worries there; he's entirely too energetic to die. Now, let's see where he was coming—"

She was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream of anguish from the doorway beside her.

Dashing into the room, the two girls found a sight that was both welcome and horrible: Fai was lying on the ground, his arms tied behind his back, weeping and crying out in pain.

"Fai!" Sakura exclaimed rushing forward and taking hold of his shoulder. "Fai, what's wrong, what's happening to you?"

"Oi! Blonde, talk to us!" Alaya commanded unsteadily, reaching a hand out and touching his face.

O-0-O

"**Well this can't **_**possibly**_** turn out well," Rie groused. Sure enough, she was able to watch as the spell Kyle had been working on latched onto Aaliyah and she swayed where she knelt and fell senseless across Fai.**

**It was then that Rie clapped a hand to her forehead at the obvious solution. It was so simple; how could she not have seen it before?**

**[Beth, can you hear me?] She typed into the computer and then sat waiting; staring at the flashing cursor as though she expected the flashing vertical bar to speak to her.**

**An eternity went by in twenty seconds.**

**{I hear you loud and clear, Rie.} The words appeared across the screen all at once like a received instant message.**

**Rie slumped back against her chair, letting her muscles relax for the first time since she had walked in to find her mistress gone.**

**[Great.] She replied. [What do I do now?]**


	10. Winds of Recollection

_Winds of Recollection_

Alaya's poor brain had taken a lot of abuse that day.

First there had been that message from whoever the male voice that sometimes spoke to her was, then the female voice, Rie, then the weird words that had brought her here to the Dungeon of Doom and now, after all that, she found herself _once again_ bombarded with a flood of thoughts that weren't her own.

Squeezing her eyes shut against the onslaught of images, she concentrated on breathing until everything around her seemed to have formed itself into more solid surroundings. She was standing on something, and that told her that whatever was going on had to be an illusion; she'd been kneeling and on her way to falling when last she checked.

Opening her eyes hesitantly, she stared around once again at complete blackness, but somehow she knew that this darkness wasn't just because there wasn't enough light to see by. It was because there was nothing to see.

Brushing off yet another fact she knew without ever having learned, she turned this way and that, trying to find something in the nothingness around her.

"Please," she heard a broken whisper plead from behind her, and turned to find a familiar lanky form lying on the ground (or whatever it was) with the black nothingness curling up around him like ropes or nets, restraining his movement and preventing him from getting up, which he was desperately trying to do. He was looking in the opposite direction from where she stood, with one arm raised in front of him, reaching out to more people who were standing a few meters away…

Alaya's blood froze in her veins.

O-0-O

"**The guard tripped and fell over a clumsily placed object in the pitch darkness," **Beth dictated, her words coming to life as Rie typed them into the computer. The writer thanked her good fortune that they had already found out that dictation worked just as well as her typing things in herself. That was quite convenient when her health—never very good—was too poor to allow her to sit up. It was also convenient when trapped in a creepy doom-castle, light-years and worlds away from her laptop. She listened as a Black Suit strode towards the hallway past her cell.

"**His luck was truly bad that day,"** she whispered, her voice no more than a breath, impossible to hear from more than a few inches from her lips. **"He fell awkwardly, his leg twisting so that he tumbled over and slammed into the grating of the cell he was walking past."**

The guard tumbled over with a crash and Beth's smile, invisible in the darkness, had a real cat-that-ate-the-canary look to it.

"**By the time his head cleared and he had managed to fumble his way back to his feet,"** she intoned, more thinking than saying the words as she nipped her hand silently through the bars.

**[He was so flustered] Rie typed with a matching grin, [that he didn't even notice his missing keys.]**

O-0-O

There was so much blood.

Alaya had to forcibly wrench her eyes away from "the other Fai" so that she wouldn't faint. She, who had _never_ had a problem with even the most grievous of injuries, _had one now._

"Fai," she whispered dryly. Her voice broke and was quite inaudible. She swallowed once, twice and a third time, trying to wet her throat enough to speak. "Fai," she tried again, a little louder as she stumbled forward and knelt at his side. "It's not real, Fai. It's an illusion, okay? I know where we are for real, and it's nothing like this. Well, maybe; it's dark there too, and just as cold…" she was babbling, she realized, and stopped at once, trying instead to rip away the black bonds that were holding him down. It was no use. They were like steel girders and wouldn't so much as flex for all her tugging.

She felt like the breath had been stolen from her lungs and her whole body was shaking. Fai didn't seem to even realize she was there as he continued to strain forward, murmuring words as though the Black Suits—she hadn't noticed them until right then, but there were several—could hear him from their distance, or would care if they did.

"Please," he wept, "please take me instead; let him go!"

"It's not real!" Alaya tried to exclaim, putting her hands over the blonde's eyes to break his stare from what it was glued to… his lookalike… Her voice was catching in her throat and she had to keep reminding herself not to look. She felt like she was going to throw up.

The man ignored her. In fact, it was like he couldn't see or hear her at all.

"You're causing this, Yuui," announced a deep voice she didn't recognize. It wasn't coming from anywhere she could see. It was probably someone speaking from outside the illusion. "It's your fault your brother suffers."

'His brother… Of course!' Alaya exclaimed mentally. That made so much sense. Kori must have looked up the wrong brother, and that was why it just _wasn't_ him on the pictures.

"_Oh shove it!_" she bellowed aloud. "Like _that_ makes any sense! This is the fault of the one perpetrating it: You! If you have any guts at all, get out here and show your ugly face instead of hiding like the _filthy, cowardly swine you are_!" Finally her voice made the sound she wanted it to, booming around the empty space like a physical manifestation of her rage. Her frozen blood had thawed and come to a rolling boil, a feeling she greatly preferred.

'Don't look,' she reminded herself. 'Just don't look at him and you won't faint.'

"C'mon you dumb blonde," she snapped gripping his shoulder and shaking him.

Really though, she should've known better after everything that had happened that day.

She had lost count of how many times her mind had been flooded with someone else's thoughts, but this was certainly the worst of them all. The man's anguish and desperation, his pain and despair washed over her and she was rendered insensible.

O-0-O

Beth's long, brightly-colored gipsy skirt had little metal bangles at the ends of the drawstrings. She had to keep them tightly clenched in her fist as she ran to muffle the sound. The long curving hallway seemed endless; surely she wasn't as bad of a runner as all that! It was just a very long hallway, right?

O-0-O

Fai's distress and agony was interrupted just a bit by the feeling of someone touching his mind.

'That accursed doctor again,' he thought with almost no energy, and glanced over to his side where the connection had come from. He froze.

She was barely visible, as if he couldn't quite look straight at her, but he still knew who it was.

"Alaya?" he exclaimed softly. He couldn't put any force behind his voice. His throat was raw from his cries. She apparently couldn't hear him as she lay passed out on the ground at his side.

His eyes widened as he realized what must have happened.

As though his senses had been on hold for the last few minutes, he heard echoes of everything she had said, and saw how she had tried to cover his eyes and eventually took hold of his shoulder to try and snap him out of it.

The spell was wearing thin; he could see through the figures of the Black suits and also through… he shouldn't have looked, he realized, and turned his face away so quickly he hurt his neck. The physical pain brought him more into reality though, and his surroundings faded even more.

Unfortunately, the spell wasn't set up to break that easily.

"Like the _filthy, cowardly swine you are!" _Alaya's voice crashed though his mind again, and the feeling of nostalgia that accompanied it was so inexorably strong that he found himself swept away into the throes of another illusion… But this one was bitingly real.

"_There you will go," the Sovereign's voice boomed through the Audience Chamber of Castle Valeria, "not to _live,_ but to _exist_. For the more you twins suffer, the more we shall prosper from the distress of the accursed twins! If either of you balk at this fate…"_

_Like there was any chance of _that _happening, Yuui thought dully. He knew that even though it meant a future of endless separation and torment, neither he nor his brother would ever make a decision that would jeopardize the life of the other._

_He looked at Fai beside him, whose expression mirrored his own, as certainly did his thoughts. They reached out and clasped each other's hands, needing no words to express their decision._

"_What a load of nonsense!" bellowed a high yet carrying voice from behind the twins. Yuui turned his head, looking past the spear-carrying guards towards the big double door. It was open by just enough for the smallish girl who stood before it to squeeze through._

_She had long brown hair pulled beck in a high ponytail, and fantastic dark eyes that burned so dark that Yuui was fairly confident that if he was close enough to see their color they'd be slate black._

"_Curse of the twins, yeah right!" she scoffed, striding forward with her little hands clenched at her sides. She had silver bangles around her wrists, over what looked like sleeves, or handless gloves that came up to her elbows and were made of some dark blue fabric. Her shirt, sleeveless, high-necked and form-fitting, was made of the same cloth, as were her shorts; so short that they barely deserved the title. Brown leather boots laced up her calves almost to her knees_

_A bizarre outfit, Yuui thought. He could tell from the touch of Fai's hand that his twin felt the same. She looked like she had come to Valeria, the ice country, not expecting it to be cold._

"_You _filthy coward,_" she spat, glaring furiously at the Sovereign as she came level with and then slowly passed the twins. Yuui's eyes were riveted on her back; it was covered in blood! There were two vertical slashes on her shoulder blades._

_Shorter though she was than the man enthroned on the dais before her, her expression showed in no uncertain terms just how much she was looking down on him. her voice showed no pain from her wounds. "Pinning the misfortune on children; aren't you ashamed of yourself? You know full well that the hardships this country is facing are the result of your own poor leadership, and you would cover that up by forcing them to take the blame? And for what; being born? How ridiculous. I've never heard anything so idiotic. It would seem that 'responsible adults' aren't. A king's duty is to serve his people in every way he can. How dare you make a mockery of this; how dare you force the blame on them for your lack of wisdom?" _

_Her words were a low, venomous hiss, but they seemed to fill all the space in the room, in the same way that a plume of smoke may not look like it is heading in one direction, but it can be smelled there nonetheless._

"You are not worthy," _she intoned, stopping in front of where the twins stood and putting a foot up on the dais, _"to occupy that throne."

O-0-O

"Alaya; Fai!" Sakura cried from back in the dungeon, shaking the two of them. "What do I do?"

"**First off,"** came a familiar voice, **"be careful you do not touch the magician's skin."** The desert princess whirled to face the speaker in the doorway and blinked in shock. She was…

O-0-O

"**Fai,"** a voice whispered from nowhere, shattering the memory like a glass façade and leaving him in the complete nothingness of the first illusion, Alaya still lying unconscious by his side. **"Fai, you need to bring Aaliyah and come back now."**

The wizard looked around in vain. No one, it seemed, had the courtesy to speak where they were both audible and visible. It didn't matter though; he knew the voice, though he had only heard it once before.

"Alright Beth," he replied, taking hold of Alaya. He carefully focused only on her and a desire to get out, back to the real world. Not anything else. He very carefully did not look up at where his brother was probably still suspended, very deliberately did not allow himself to think of this as leaving him behind.

He felt a slight pull, like a hand on his shoulder was tugging him backwards, and with a rush of color and sensation, he found himself back in the dungeon.

O-0-O

Sakura jumped forward again from where she had sat to be out of the way as the brunette woman in the long skirt had worked some sort of verbal spell under her breath. Fai was stirring, finally, though Alaya remained apparently unconscious.

"Thank goodness!" the sandy-haired girl exclaimed.

"**You lot,"** the woman commanded the guards in the corners who had only now started to react to what was going on, **"cancel previous orders, pattern delta-gamma-epsilon-theta."** The Black Suits retracted from their ready positions and stood once more to attention.

"Impressive," Dr. Kyle's strained voice was part grudgingly impressed, part malicious. "Where did you pick that one up?"

"**The code?"** the brunette replied conversationally, looking up to see the man leaning against the doorframe, blood dripping from the bullet wound in his leg. **"I made it up. It's pretty handy, no?"**

"You made it—" he started, but cut off as he saw Fai sit up; Alaya's inert form slumped across his lap.

"You!" he exclaimed, "How did you escape my spell? You were close to breaking point!"

But the bleary-eyed wizard did not even respond. Sakura scurried around behind him, trying to undo the heavy ropes and free his hands.

"Sakura, you're here too?" he said, hesitant to believe the evidence of his own senses. Normally it'd be Kuro-mew and Syaoran doing this sort of thing, rather than "pretty princess" and "scary princess." (Not that he would _ever_ categorize them like that out loud.) Sakura nodded tearfully.

"Are you hurt, Fai?" she asked worriedly.

"Not a scratch," he replied, flashing her his trademark smile and hoping she didn't notice his split lip. Her forlorn expression said she didn't believe it though, and he had enough respect for her to let it drop off his face. "What happened to Alaya?"

"**Aaliyah's just mentally exhausted, that's all,"** replied Beth. He recognized her voice and turned to congratulate her on her apparent escape, but was rendered speechless with shock when he saw what she looked like. She ignored this and placed the tips of her fingers gently on the rebel princess's forehead. She seemed to concentrate for a moment, and then relaxed and sat back on her heels. **"She'll be just fine."**

"Beth Nottingham," Fai Wang Reed's voice boomed through the room. No one—not even Kyle—had seen him enter, but he was suddenly there, looming over the four intruders and escapees like the grim reaper. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"**The pleasure's all yours,**_** butt-chin,**_**"** she shot back. **"You could have just sent an **_**e-mail **_**you know; or a **_**letter**_** if you're too technologically illiterate for that. You didn't have to go to all the trouble of this **_**chain**_** of prisoners **_**just**_** to get in contact with me."** Her voice was low and ominous, each individual word colored crimson with rage brewing just below the surface, like a volcano looking for someplace to break through and erupt.

Fei Wong smiled, his eyes boring down into hers, but her expression reflected no fear for the man who held her captive. She looked up at him through her eyelashes in a glare that almost had physical heat to it.

Sakura reflexively shrank closer to Fai and Alaya. The tension was rising so quickly it could almost be felt, like the electrical charge in the air just before a lightning storm.

"I wanted to be certain of your cooperation before bringing you my request," he explained amiably. The man radiated malice; the hair on the back of Sakura's neck was standing all on end.

She did not even respond, as if words would not do justice to the indignation she wanted to express. The two glares did not lessen in intensity by as much as a waver of the eyes or a blink of the eyelids.

O-0-O

Too many spells… too many thoughts not her own… Alaya felt like she was swimming in a never-ending torrent of feelings when she first passed out. She did her best to keep her head above water, as it were, clinging to simple things like her own name and Alphonse's.

After some time the tide receded and she was able to remember more complex things, like Fai and trying to rescue him, and what she had seen inside his mind… Even in her twisted dream she wanted to throw up.

_Why_ had they done that to him? If she had seen a _quarter_ of that done to Al… she shuddered at the thought of what she would have done to make it stop, and slowly began to swim her way up through layers of unconsciousness.

Her head ached as she came too. Not just a little throbbing, but the onslaught of a migraine, pounding and pulsing and stinging through every nerve, making it impossible to concentrate on anything. It took some time for her to realize she was waking up, and even more time to remember where she was, and still more to be able to hear the voices of the people around her speaking over the clamor filling her maltreated brain.

Eventually she cracked an eye open—a mistake, she realized too late as the faint light of the torches in the room pierced through her iris like a knife—and caught sight of a knee near her head, almost as if she were lying across someone's lap…

After that, consciousness was much easier to grasp. The headache receded to the normal pounding that accompanies waking up from an unnaturally deep slumber, and she sat up, rubbing a hand across her dry eyes.

"What's going on?" she moaned softly.

"That is a rather long story," Fai's voice responded dryly from somewhere very close to her left ear. "But it would seem now you and Sakura are prisoners as well."

"_**Oh no they are not,"**_ a familiar voice replied irritably**. "I can tell you one thing, Fei Wong, if you don't set these three loose this very minute, you'll get absolutely no help from me, no matter what you want or how much you're paying. They go free,**_** right now,**_** do you understand? **

**Honestly," **she seethed,** "just how inept are you people? I was right here! You could have talked to me any time you wanted! Anyway, I'm a business person! I would have negotiated with you. But no, you had to go and do your brainless-villain-thing…" **Here her speech became much less coherent, with her muttering things under her breath and interrupting herself.** "Kidnap and torture them… and then you expect me to help you? Good grief man, you need to be introduced to the concept of tact… heck, brains might do you good as well… dumb hairdo… what are you, and owl with that monocle? All you are is the Lord of Bat-Guano, and you'll never be anything else…"**

The man with the side-burns who stood beside that Kyle fellow stared thoughtfully down at the speaker through the monocle, ignoring her enraged tirade.

"Do you really think you're in any position to make demands, Nottingham?" he asked threateningly. "These people are important to you, yes? I doubt someone as elusive as you would have come out of her den if that were not the case. If you do not comply with me, they will be made to suffer; you can be sure of that."

Alaya wrenched her strained eyes from the speaker—Fei Wong, apparently—to look at the owner of the voice that had given her and Sakura directions only a few minutes ago.

"**Then hear this," **the girl replied in a voice that was little more than a venomous hiss, **"I can be gone from here in an instant if I so chose; harm them and I shall vanish without a trace, rendering all your effort a waste!"**

"Oh my—" Alaya exclaimed, her mind not able to accept the image of the girl's profile that her eyes were sending to it.

Nottingham turned her face at the noise, looking straight at her.

It was impossible! Totally impossible!

"You…" Alaya breathed. "You're… _me!_"


	11. Check and Checkmate

_Check and Checkmate_

Beth's dark eyes betrayed nothing as Alaya pointed a shaky finger in her direction.

"You… you're _me!_" the baffled princess exclaimed in a voice that had done a bit too much shouting for one day.

Beth Nottingham's hair was dark brown and wavy, framing a face that was virtually identical to Alaya's, save that her complexion was a bit paler. She looked about Alaya's age too, though Alaya had to admit to herself that automatically assuming she was nineteen was going a bit far, considering people never got her own age right.

Her body was the same too; the same shape and height as far as she could tell when she herself was still half slumped against Fai and her double was kneeling a meter or so away. The shape of her eyes, the curve of her eyelashes, even the calm poker-face expression she wore; if her hair hadn't been so brutally short, Alaya would have sworn she was looking in a mirror. It was _very_ short, she noticed, and she clung to that as the one difference she could find. It was shorter than Syaoran's; they weren't completely identical.

"**I hadn't planned on this,"** Beth murmured. Her voice was a low and resonant alto, and Alaya added that to her hair on the list of strong differences. Her own voice was drier and had less body to it. **"You and I weren't supposed to meet until much later, but I suppose that can't be helped now."** She stood up, the ties on her skirt jingling softly, almost like sleigh-bells. **"My name is Beth Nottingham. The rest is a very complicated, convoluted explanation, which I do promise to give you eventually. Not now though; your brain really and truly can't handle it."** She stepped lightly over, her bare feet making no sound on the stone floor, and touched Alaya's forehead with her fore and middle fingers. Her eyebrows puckered a little in concern.

"**You're not used to all the telepathy you've been using today, and you've strained yourself rather badly. You need to go home and sleep for a night and a day. Seriously, tell Rand and Kori to make certain no one disturbs you, take some cold-medicine and don't get up for anything until tomorrow evening at the earliest, do you hear me?**

**As for me…"** here she smiled just slightly. **"Just… go ahead and make up whatever story suits your fancy and believe that for the time being, okay? I'd like it if you'd think of me as benevolent though."**

"Bene—_what?_" Alaya growled in utter confusion. "Wait a sec, so you want me to just make up my own story, but trust that you have good intentions—with _no_ explanation—and instructions to drug myself into uselessness for the next thirty-six hours. Do I _look_ stupid to you?"

"When you've _quite_ finished," Fei Wong interrupted what was shaping up to be a fairly intense monologue.

"**Yes, yes," **Beth groused. **"I haven't forgotten about you, 'Wolverine Wannabe.'" **Her anger seemed to have abated slightly from her cryptic conversation with Alaya, and her speech was less garbled and easier to understand. Well, it was easier to understand until she suddenly turned her face away and looked over her shoulder.

"**My deepest apologies to Hugh Jackman and Wolverine fans everywhere,"** she said, and gave a little half-bow.

"H-how dare you, woman?" Kyle spluttered in indignation. "Do you even know to whom you—"

"**To the Lord of Bat-Guano, yes,"** she replied sourly. **"And the irate Hugh Jackman fans,"** she muttered as an afterthought. A vein in Fei Wong's temple pulsed.

O-0-O

**Rie leaned forward, her elbows on either side of the keyboard and her head in her hands. **

**What now? If Beth started dictating, Fei Wong, or Fei Wang or whatever his name was supposed to be would surely notice and interrupt. Composing a story would take too long; he'd have her gagged before she formed the first paragraph.**

**Aaliyah was far too exhausted to be expected to use her power again. It had only been a few weeks since the last time she'd used it, and she'd never managed it twice in one day before. **

**The wizard was still stubbornly not using his magic, and the desert princess hadn't been very powerful to begin with.**

**The concerned doctor stared blearily at the screen, wondering if she needed reading glasses. The text was becoming blurry and hard to concentrate on…**

**Who was going to save them now?**

O-0-O

Fai's train of thought was much the same as Rie's as he supported Alaya by her shoulder. Scary Princess seemed not to have any energy; her body was completely limp and she was shivering slightly. However she had gotten here, he would be willing to bet she couldn't get back the same way in her condition, especially considering what lengths Beth had told her to go to so she'd get enough rest.

Sakura knelt beside him, looking nervously from him and Alaya to Fei Wong and Kyle, and darting occasional glances at Beth. Her hands were clenched on her knees…

Her fingers were wrapped around a black, 30mm handgun.*

"Sakura," he breathed, his voice covered by Fei Wong Reed's as the Bat Lord started into some long oration on his powers and accomplishments, probably to try and intimidate Beth into helping him with whatever he wanted her to help him with. "Give me the gun," he instructed Pretty princess. "Come around to help Alaya and slip it to me behind her, okay?"

Sakura crawled discreetly to Alaya's side and passed the gun to Fai. Then she took the other princess's hand in one of her own. The rebel princess's skin was so cold! She saw Fai begin to move and put her other hand behind Alaya's back to support her as he let go and jumped forward.

O-0-O

"_**What**_** is he **_**doing**_**?" Rie exclaimed, slamming her hands down on the desk in shock and horror as she read how the magician yank her mistress to her feet and point the gun at her head.**

O-0-O

"You had all better stay still; no sudden movements," Fai demanded coolly. "Unless of course you'd like Miss Nottingham's valuable head blown off. If you want her to work with you on anything, you're going to have to show us where the portal-control center is."

"How brutal," Fei Wong commented. "I didn't know you had it in you to threaten an unarmed girl, Fai. It seems now we know what your own life is worth to you, since she'll be the _second_ one who was sacrificed on your behalf." Fai's chest tightened, his heart wrenching in agony, but he kept it off his face.

"Indeed," he agreed, his eyes steely and unreadable, "and soon we shall see what this person's life is worth to _you_, won't we?"

The two stared each other down for what felt to Sakura like an eternity. She wondered in terror if Fai would actually shoot the girl. Then the monocle-wearing man stepped aside and gestured past him into the hallway. 'Too easy,' Fai thought, but said nothing.

She stood up, wrapping Alaya's arm around her shoulders to steady her. The rebel princess could sort of walk, but she was wobbly and dizzy and needed Sakura to guide her in the right direction. Fei Wong lead the way, followed closely—at Fai's _polite_ insistence—by the still-bleeding Kyle. The blonde wondered if Alaya had shot the irritating henchman, and hoped the wound hurt a lot. Sakura and Alaya followed their enemies down the hallway, and Fai himself brought up the rear, with one arm thrown around Beth and the gun pressed lightly to her temple.

The Bat Lord opened a door and showed them into a room ringed by dozens of ellipse-shaped portals. Kyle limped forward and started typing in commands on a keypad by one of them, but Fai was distracted by Beth's fingers on his wrist. He looked down at her out of his peripheral vision, and she shook her head ever so slightly, and then nodded in the direction of a different opening.

"I'm so very sorry," Fai addressed their foes with something akin to amusement in his voice. "It would seem you've gotten lost in your own castle. We want to go to _Dumault_." He nodded in the same direction Beth had indicated. "_That_ one."

Kyle looked like he'd just swallowed a lemon whole, and Fei Wong's vein was pulsing again, but he gestured for his henchman to prepare to correct portal. At least, Fai had to hope it was the correct one this time. They all looked identical to him, and there weren't any magical traces he could recognize, because the power-signatures were all too garbled to differentiate between them. Beth didn't object this time though, so that was a good sign.

It seemed the portals were a combination of magic and technology, and Kyle stepped back as the unseen mechanism whirred to life. The inside of the portal swirled and contorted, and Fai stepped forward, bringing Beth with him and backing into the distortion in space that would set them free. Sakura was behind him, closer to the portal, still supporting Alaya.

"Leave the Nottingham girl," Fei Wong demanded. "I still have business with her." Fai's face didn't change from his mask of cold indifference. His smile was long gone.

"No!" Sakura exclaimed softly, "Fai, listen, don't actually hurt her or leave her here, okay? She was in a cell when we got here and she told us how to get to you! She was the one who broke the spell on you and Alaya!"

"**Au contraire,"** Beth contradicted her calmly, as though she were sitting in her own house having a perfectly normal conversation**. "The spell was a powerful illusion; I stepped in and showed the illusion itself to be false, but it was Fai's mind that did the spell-breaking."**

"Regardless," Fei Wong drawled, cutting off Sakura's next words, "you will not all be leaving here. My only objective is the girl. Give her to me and you will all go free. If you refuse, I will continue to hunt you until you are all dead, including the ninja and the boy." He smiled, knowing he had them trapped. "Will you really risk your friends being hurt over this girl? When she couldn't even be bothered to show herself while the magician was being tortured? Is she really worth it?"

Fai's blue eyes were like ice as he upraised his former captors, seeming to consider what Fei Wong had said.

"**You mean,"** Beth reminded him sourly, **"like how you couldn't be bothered to tell anyone—including me—that I was your **_**objective**_**? Thus giving me **_**no**_** reason to think that revealing myself would help? Sorry buddy, this one's entirely your fault. **

**For the record,"** here she looked up amicably at Fai, **"he's **_**already**_** hunting and will continue to hunt you. Judging by his progress so far, I'd say with only marginal success… if any."** Fei Wong's jaw twitched, and Fai could see him beginning a spell even before he said the words aloud.

"Hurry Sakura!" he shouted, breaking his ruthless façade and yanking Bath towards the portal. The desert princess dragged the rebel princess jumped headlong into the portal. Fai let the gun fall, gripping Beth's upper arm and racing for their magical escape. He felt powerful magic approaching them from behind as they entered the elliptical opening and ducked low, pulling Beth's head down in an attempt to avoid the attack.

It ricocheted off of the top of the portal, shattering a wall behind its caster, and the magician breathed a sigh of relief as he and his prisoner were swept away in the familiar, comforting embrace of inter-dimensional magic.

***"For the record, I don't actually know anything about guns,"** he _thought_ he heard Beth mutter, but so quietly that he couldn't be certain she had actually spoken. **"I just looked up images on Google. So it may or may not be accurate. See footnote above."**

Her words made no sense, so he ignored them, pretending he hadn't heard.

Their journey ended abruptly in a tangle of limbs on a stable, flat surface, and for once Fai was in Kuro-bun's common position; on the bottom wondering how many of his ribs were still in one place. Alaya and Sakura were both fairly light, and judging by the fact that Beth and Alaya were virtually identical, she probably was as well. Unfortunately, all three of them at once were still pretty heavy.

Sakura was the first to move, since she was—in all likelihood—the most experienced of the three girls when it came to landing after traveling between worlds.

"Alaya, are you okay?" she asked as Beth got up and Fai found Alaya once again in his lap. Her eyes were unfocused and her skin was pale, almost as pale as her lookalike's.

"Not… really," she whispered weakly, and her eyes flickered closed, blinking out what appeared to be a tear of blood.

"Wha—" Sakura started, but Beth cut her off in a reassuring voice.

"**She just broke a capillary from the strain on her mind. Her eye will look pretty ugly later on, but it'll heal up in a day or two and be like it never happened. It doesn't signify anything dire. There's a bedroom through that door,"** she said and pointed to a black door out of the living-room-looking place they had landed in. It was fairly nondescript; grey carpet and tan furniture with a framed piece of modern art on the wall that vaguely resembled… well, it was geometric shapes, and not very artistic if truth were told.

Fai stood, lifting Alaya in his arms as he had done once before and carrying her into the colorless bedroom Beth directed them too. Where they were and how she knew her way around were questions he would ask later, he thought as he set the princess down on the cream-colored sheets and Sakura smoothed the thick brown comforter over her.

"What's happening to her?" he asked softly, looking at Beth out of the corner of his eye. She sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down until she was sitting with her back against it.

"**She's taken in too much sensory data; her brain can't process it so it's shutting down,"** she explained with an exhausted sigh.

"Too much sensory data?" Sakura repeated in confusion, taking a tissue from a box on the night table and wiping the blood from Alaya's face.

"**She's telepathic… well,"** Beth stopped and though about that for a moment. **"More like she can receive telepathic communications under certain circumstances when conditions are exactly perfect, and only from certain sources. She's overwhelmed because today she used her latent powers for the first time, and the second and third and fourth and who-knows-how-many more. Her mental "muscles" weren't ready to handle it, because it's not something she does often, so her mind eventually just said, 'okay, enough of this, I quit.'"**

"But then what will happen to her now?" Sakura inquired worriedly, brushing her fingertips against Alaya's forehead as if she could somehow heal her with a touch. Beth smiled fondly as if she knew exactly what was going through Sakura's mind.

"**If she sleeps for a long time, she'll be just fine. She does have the ability to do these sorts of things; she just needs time to get better at it so she won't faint anymore. Until now only one person has ever 'spoken' to her like that, and it doesn't quite work the same way as what's been happening today. She just needs to rest."**

"Who has been 'speaking' to her, as you put it?" Fai inquired. Beth smirked enigmatically.

"**That, my friend,"** she breezed, straightening up and turning to leave the room, **"is not my story to tell. Well then, keep her in bed until tomorrow morning at the earliest, okay? I'll let the resistance folks know you're back so Syaoran doesn't tear **_**too**_** much of his hair out. Rie, I'm ready. Beam me up."** Before the wizard or the princess could say anything else, she stepped through the door and vanished into the air as she crossed the threshold.

"Well, that was exciting," Fai remarked with a grin. Sakura just sighed and put her head down on her folded arms on the edge of Alaya's mattress.

O-0-O

"**Ugh!" Beth ranted, alternately eating a large bar of chocolate and drinking from a large pot of coffee. "You'd think dungeon-managers would have the common decency to provide some caffeine in their diets, but NOOOOOOO, bread and water! Heaven forbid they'd serve coffee! Not even instant!"**

**Rie just chuckled as she watched the exhausted wizard and princess locate the other bedroom and the living room couch in the condo they had landed at, and fall into them to sleep off their unwanted adventure.**

"**Thanks," Beth said suddenly, coming up silently behind her doctor and putting a hand on her shoulder. "I owe you… again."**

"**It's too bad I couldn't do more though," Rie mused. "I'd really have liked to reduce that Fei Wong jerk to a blob of smoldering grease for what he did to Fai."**

"**Yeah," Beth agreed. "I'd like nothing more. But unfortunately, killing off the villain creates what's called 'stagnation in time,' or a 'closed loop timeline.' The heroes end up running around in circles until they melt into nothingness because things were cut off before the end."**

"**Were you really thinking that at the time though?" Rie asked, her eyebrow raised and a small knowing smirk on her face. Beth laughed.**

"**Not a **_**bit**_** of it. I was thinking of creative ways to get the gun from Fai so I could use it to shoot the Guano-Lord. Too bad about that spell he used at the end; I never got the chance. Of course," her voice became quieter, "in reality, I would have missed anyway."**

"**Who knows?" Rie countered, standing up. She and Beth were eye-to-eye, the Japanese woman being a bit tall for her nationality. "But you weren't **_**in**_** 'reality,' now were you? Either way…" she stepped forward and wrapped her arms gently around the girl in front of her. "I'm really glad you made it back safely."**

"**So am I, doc," Beth replied after a pause.**

**Then her mind filled with haze and she passed out on Rie's shoulders.**


	12. A Moment

**A/N: I am so glad to be back in the world of laptops and coffee and **_**Skillet**_**. -_-' I guess I'm a 21****st**** century American teen to a fault.**

_A Moment_

Fai woke up hungry. He had dreamt all afternoon, evening, night and most of the morning about food. When he finally awoke and sat up on the couch where he had slept, his stomach growled audibly and he knew the very first thing he needed to do was find the kitchen and devour something.

There was a door off of the living room opposite the one that led to the two bedrooms and the bathroom, and he opened it to find a dining table and a long counter with cabinets mounted to the walls behind it. Perfect.

"Fai, I'm glad you're awake," Sakura greeted him. She was seated at the table munching on some bread with peanut butter smeared on it. Even as he made a beeline for the pantry to get himself something, he couldn't help but marvel at the way she was handling the situation. She, who was always sleeping, had woken up before him. She had also handled herself with some pretty impressive composure back in the dungeons, helping Alaya walk and not hesitating to jump into the portal.

Then again, he realized with some chagrin as he tore into a package of croissants, since _everything_ was new and surprising for her due to her memories being lost, it couldn't possibly be _that_ astonishing that she'd react well to the unexpected.

"You can heat those up in there," the sandy-haired girl informed him, pointing to a black box suspended over the cooking range with a door in the front and a button panel on one side. "Beth was here earlier and she showed me around."

"Oh?" Fai responded, not _entirely_ certain if he liked the idea of a girl he had once threatened to shoot talking to Sakura while everyone else was asleep.

"She brought another person with her too; a woman named Rie who said she was a doctor. She was checking up on Alaya, and she woke her up long enough to take some medicine, for the stress to her brain, I think."

"I see," he mused, poking the microwave buttons and watching his croissants rotate slowly on the turntable. He remembered a similar machine on Piffle world, though it had had a touch-screen directly in the center of the door. "Are they still here?"

"No," Sakura shook her head as she got up to put her dishes in the sink. "They left around ten, about half an hour ago, after Beth used the phone to call Rand and Kurogane and Syaoran and tell them where we were. I guess this place is a hiding spot for the rebels when they need someplace subtle to get away from the public eye."

"Is Alaya still asleep?" he asked between ravenous bites of pastry. Sakura nodded as she headed towards the living room.

"She was when I left. I'm going to check on her again though."

Fai watched her disappear through the doorway, still wearing the school uniform she had donned to blend in when they had gone exploring… was it the day before yesterday? He supposed he had been on a different time-frame than she had, so he couldn't assume it had been as long for her. He wondered how much time had passed for Syaoran and Kurgy. The poor kid was probably in a panic from being separated from Sakura. Even if the big ninja didn't show it, he was probably worried about her too…

He didn't let his mind stray into wondering if they were worried about _him_. He had made a choice not to get too involved with them; pointless musings didn't help anything.

O-0-O

"**How depressing," Beth muttered in irritation from where she lay on her bed listening to Rie read aloud. "Distract him, okay? I'm not up to reading an angst jag."**

"**How would you suggest I do that?" Rie inquired professionally, flexing her fingers. Taking dictations from Beth was the closest she could get to the power she had possessed as a child, so she didn't mind the extra work. She wondered what would have happened if she hadn't been one of the 75% of children who lost their power before they were five. **

**Would she have given it up when she was older and she learned that the power to make stories come to life, to blur the line between fantasy and reality wasn't something people accepted and tolerated? Would her parents and those who cared about her have forced her to stop using it when she hit puberty and found out about the toll it took on her body?**

**Or would she have kept it and ended up like Beth when she started to mature; weak and ill on a straight road to an early grave?**

**She looked down at the bedridden authoress where she was playing with Sakura's feather.**

"**Send him this," Beth replied, handing the feather over to the brooding doctor.**

O-0-O

Fai's eyes widened as the napkin basket in the center of the table caught fire, and he sat back, staring around for the source. There didn't seem to be any magic coming from anywhere, but flames didn't just spring up from nowhere, did they?

As suddenly as they had come, they vanished, leaving an envelope atop the napkins and a faint smell of smoke.

The wizard reached hesitantly forward and plucked the envelope out of the basket. It was room-temperature and the white paper it was made from wasn't even scorched. The napkins, basket and table were also unscathed.

O-0-O

Riding on Syaoran's lap in the car that was headed to pick up their friends from the safe-house, Mokona's eyes went wide.

"Mekyo!" it exclaimed, "Sakura's feather! It's coming from up ahead, and it's really strong!"

O-0-O

Fai stared between the feather in his left hand and the short note in his right. It was written in the script used in Celes, and signed "Beth Nottingham."

'_Dear Wizard-san,' _it said.

'_Please give Sakura her feather back and make sure Aaliyah doesn't get up until this afternoon, okay?_

_Thanks._

_Beth Nottingham.'_

"Well _that_ was informative," Fai muttered sarcastically, scanning the letter again in an attempt to find anything between the lines that might explain who Alaya's lookalike _was_ or _why_ she had a feather in the _first place_, not to mention why she was returning it without a struggle. On top of that, he was pretty sure she had spelled Alaya's name wrong, though he'd never seen it written out before. That also brought up the question of what the odds were that she would _just happen_ to know Celesian script…

When he entered Alaya's bedroom, he found her awake and sitting up against a bunch of pillows, talking animatedly to Sakura, who was telling her about the dragonfly races in Piffle world. Apparently that meant the rebel princess knew who they really were and where they came from.

"Sakura," he addressed his companion softly, and she looked up at him, her jade eyes widening at the sight of her feather in his hand.

"Where did you find that?" she exclaimed, getting up from the chair she had been occupying and rushing over to him.

"Beth sent it," he replied as the feather glowed brilliantly white and disappeared into the desert princess's chest. Her eyes were unfocused for a while, and then she swayed and dropped into his arms.

Alaya didn't speak as he gathered Sakura up and carried her into the other bedroom to sleep off the returned memory. She was silent as he reentered the room and offered her a glass of water, which she mutely accepted and drained its contents in one long gulp. Fai sat down in the chair Sakura had just vacated and stared broodingly at his own hands for a little while.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry."

They had both spoken at once, and he laughed sheepishly.

"I'm sorry for peeping into your dreams," he clarified. "It was a violation of privacy, and I apologize." Alaya nodded.

"I can forgive you for that," she responded timidly, "but can you forgive me? I saw things in your head as well… things I don't think you'd want anyone to see." He thought about that for a moment. It _did_ bother him that she had seen, although he was certain it wasn't her intention.

"If I had seen that… if it had been Al…" she whispered, and he looked up from his hands to see that she was looking away from him, her voice thick with tears. "I would have broken, I know it."

Fai stood up and walked around the bed to sit beside her, offering her some tissues which she took gratefully. She wouldn't meet his eyes. His mind began to dust off old memories, and he saw her as a little denim-clad girl, crying and beating against the chest of a black-haired boy who held her as he ascended on invisible wings.

"_Al!" she screamed, "No! We have to save them! They didn't do anything wrong! It could have been _us_ down there, Al!"_

_Her brother's eyes were deep blue, darker than Fai and Yuui's own, but filling with tears to match his sister's._

"_I'm sorry," he whispered, but a wind that blew from who-knew-where inside of a building seemed to take his words and carry them to the blonde twins' ears. "I'm so sorry, but changing history will only result in more grief and suffering. We wouldn't be saving them at all."_

"_No…" she had sobbed, her head lolling forward as she lost consciousness on the boy's chest. The boy cradled her carefully, making certain no to touch the wounds on her back. He looked up to the ceiling he was about to crash into, and in a flash of light and the two of them vanished as if they had never been._

"Do you remember when we first met?" Fai asked softly, looking at his knees with the ghost of a melancholy smile on his lips.

"Yes," she replied in a whisper. "I dreamed about it last night. Al wiped my memories that day, because I was so distraught about not being able to do anything. I hated feeling so helpless…"

"Did you know that you and Alphonse were the first people—and probably the last—who ever cried for us?" he asked her. He felt rather than saw her look at him and nodded, agreeing with himself. "From the time we were born, everyone around us made us remember that we were cursed, unwanted, a problem for everyone.

That day we were sent to the Valley of the Condemned for the crime of existing. But you know something?"

He looked up, catching her violet eyes—one of which was tinted yellow from the blood the previous day—and held her gaze with his own.

"You were the reason I didn't believe them."

He heard her catch her breath softly. She hadn't seen that coming. Frankly, _he_ hadn't planned to say it either; he hadn't dredged up his old thoughts and feelings in more years than he would admit to. But it was the truth, he realized as he skimmed over all the memories of the wall he had tried so desperately to climb.

"We grew up with the label of 'bad luck,' and by the time we were locked up, I have to admit we were losing the battle in our own minds not to accept it as reality. No one had ever told us any different. You may not feel like you were able to do anything, but what you did do was more enormous than you can know."

Alaya's eyes were still full of tears which were spilling over and dripping down her face one by one. He made to reach for the tissues again, but she threw herself suddenly into his chest, wrapping her arms around him, her face buried in his shoulder.

"Don't smile," she whispered. "I keep seeing you hide what you're feeling behind that smile, but I _already know_; I know because _I_ lost my other half too! If you can't show your true face to me then I won't look. But please, don't pretend like you're okay when I know you're not!" her eyes were closed, her face hidden in the white shirt he was wearing. He could feel her body trembling from her sobs, and he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding; a breath he might well have been holding since Fai had died.

He leaned forward and pressed his cheek against the top of her head, listening to her cry the tears he wasn't able to shed. For the first time in waking memory since he had left Celes, he relaxed the muscles in his face and let his brow crumple and his mouth fall at the corners.

Soon Kurogane and Syaoran would arrive with Rand and some of the rebels. Soon Sakura would wake up and she and Alaya—who seemed to be getting along very nicely indeed—would start talking about other worlds again. Soon he would have to hitch his mask back over his face and joke around about how inept Kyle Rondart was.

But not just yet.


	13. Until the Day We Meet Again

**A big thank-you to my wonderful beta, FMA Human Starter Kit-san, and my dear friend, Obsidian Butterfly-san, who have both been highly helpful and influential and supportive and all-around awesome while I wrote this thing. You two are awesome! (Not to mention the fact that Butterfly-san wrote part of chapter 8!)**

**Thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, subscribed or added this story to their favorites! You guys rock! **

_Until the Day We Meet Again_

"Kurogane! Syaoran! Mokona!" Sakura's voice rang out happily as she took a few running steps toward the doorway where her companions had entered the room. The chocolate-haired teen's face was tense as he entered, and when he heard the princess's voice the tension seemed to flood out of his whole body. His expression relaxed and his lips widened in a smile of relief.

"Princess!" he exclaimed. "Fai, you're both all right!" The blonde mage grinned from where he was sprawled on the sofa in the safe-house's living room.

"Did you miss me?" he asked nonchalantly, fluttering his eyelashes at Kurogane. The ninja quirked up an eyebrow sourly. "Come on Kuro-woofie," he cajoled, standing up and striding over to where he could look into the taller man's eyes. "You know your life would be boring without me around!"

"Yeesh, _you're_ no worse for wear," the ninja grumbled as Mokona hopped from his shoulder to Sakura's and rubbed its cheek against hers in greeting. Fai did not quite meet the searching red eyes. They saw just a little too much for comfort.

"Where's Alaya?" Rand asked, shouldering in behind Kurogane and heading for the short hallway with the bedrooms. "Is she still in bed?"

"Yes," Sakura replied, quite unnecessarily since the big captain was already knocking on the bedroom door. Alaya's voice called him in, and he entered, closing the door behind him.

It was around noon; only an hour and a half since Sakura had taken the feather inside of herself, but she had woken up fifteen minutes or so ago and seemed perfectly fine. She was getting stronger, Fai observed for the second time that day.

He and Sakura took turns giving a stirring rendition of their experiences, which thanks to his constantly getting sidetracked and making things up, was only about twenty percent accurate. Syaoran and Mokona nodded and gasped and laughed in all the right places, but Kurgy was silent and stern, his eyes never leaving the magician's face.

By the time they were done talking, Rand appeared again, followed by Alaya, whose face was back in the perfect expression of indifference she usually presented. Fai looked up at her, and she met his eyes and gave the smallest hint of a smile. The expression was gone as soon as he noticed it, and no one else seemed to see.

But he had seen it.

They drove back to Érail in the same old, rusty cars that they had ridden in when they were originally taken to the rebel's base.

"We send the new ones to other locations," Vic the driver explained when Fai commented on the fact that all their stolen gear wasn't being used. "It'd be too risky to use them in the same city where they were originally purloined. Don't worry though; I can still coax some moves out of these old rust-buckets."

Syaoran looked a little green.

Fai looked at Alaya's placid face where he could see it reflected in the rear-view mirror. She was sitting in front of him beside Vic. She was looking out the window, and he was suddenly reminded of the way she had looked when they met on the street; exhausted and frightened and covered in blood. It was easy to forget how vulnerable she could be when she was dressing up in her brother's clothes and barking orders, but he was reminded of the way her feet had bled, and the way her back had been torn by two vertical slashes.

"_I've been hopping dimensions by accident ever since I was a little girl,"_ she had told him after she got a hold of herself and stopped crying that morning. She had spoken the words softly in his ear, still wrapped in his embrace._ "The first time it had ever happened was the time I met you. I was so confused when I suddenly found myself in an unfamiliar castle, surrounded by people in weird clothes. I had no idea where I was or how I had gotten there, or why I was bleeding."_

"_Your back was bleeding when you were on the run a few days ago too," Fai observed. His fingers gently traced the back of her shirt. She was very warm; a comforting presence to have in his arms. He liked this side of her much more than the way she tried to portray herself. _

"_That happens when I use my power," she explained. "I think I have wings or something, but I'm never conscious enough to look when it's happening. Yesterday was the first time I ever deliberately decided where to go, actually."_

"_You weren't hurt when I woke up though," Fai observed._

"_No…" she agreed. "For some reason nothing happened that time. I wonder why?" The two of them were quiet for some time after that, since neither had the answer._

"_Al was much better at it," she murmured. "He would always come find me when I got lost in some foreign world. He had wings too, but they were made of wind and they didn't have to tear his skin to unfold. That's why I got captured last week," she admitted. "I've never had to get _myself_ out of the situations I get into when my power takes me somewhere until now. With him gone, I didn't know how to get home, and I ended up seeking help from the wrong people."_

"_Those fellows who called you '#1138,' I presume?" Fai guessed shrewdly. She nodded into his shoulder._

"_It turns out they were in league with That Man. They wanted to know about my power and where I got it, and a whole bunch of other stuff I didn't really understand. As soon as I got the chance I bolted—taking as much information from their computers as I could, of course—but I couldn't get away. I ran and they caught me and I escaped and ran again, over and over until finally I ran into you. If Rand hadn't shown up when he did; if he didn't have the little bit of magic required to sense my presence…"_

"_Then Syaoran and Kuro-ninja would've fought them off," Fai informed her with a gentle, genuine laugh. "Kuro-puppy can't resist a fight you know, and Syaoran isn't the type who sits back and watches someone get hauled off by creeps._

_I would've fought too," he said softly. "I may not be as strong as they are, but I don't abandon wounded girls in the rain either."_

"_I've no doubt of it," she agreed, and though he couldn't see her smile, he could feel it in her voice. She was still for a little while again, and then suddenly addressed him with trepidation in her tone._

"_Fai?" she said, as if he wouldn't know she was speaking to him._

"_What is it?" he asked. She sighed._

"_You and the others," she began hesitantly, "you're here looking for those feathers, right?"_

"_Yes, that's right," he responded. "They're Sakura's memories. Syaoran is looking for them, and me and Biggs… well, we're along for the ride and to help him out, you could say. Why?"_

"_Now that you've given her that feather that made her faint a little while ago, does that mean… you're leaving?"_

_Fai didn't answer. He could feel her heard pounding against his chest where he held her. For one moment he wondered what it would be like to stay here. He could join the rebellion and steal cars and poke fun at the dress code. He'd get a hawk. He'd spend some quality time getting to know Alaya better…_

'_He would always come find me when I got lost in some foreign world…' _

_Her words echoed through his mind, and he saw an image of another who had promised to do something quite similar; a person who was locked in an underwater prison, but who wouldn't remain bound forever…_

"_Yes," he responded. "We'll probably be going very soon, actually. Now that Sakura's retrieved her feather…" there was no longer a reason to stay. He left the end of the thought out, but he knew she heard it in his silence._

"_I see," was all she replied. _

_After that, neither of them spoke for a long time until they heard Sakura moving around in the room across the hall. Fai had left then without looking back at the princess on the bed. He would have wagered that she wasn't looking at him either._

Érail city erupted in cheers as they exited the vehicles and began the hike from the garage cave to the castle built from Liaré's bedrock. Alaya strode forward confidently like she owned the place—which in fact she _did_, so that was acceptable. Rand walked a step behind and beside her as they both listened to the report a rebel agent was giving as he trotted backwards in front of them.

Dinner that night was a feast; a celebration of the safe return of himself, Alaya, Sakura from the unknown dangerous place to which they had been spirited away. He regaled many groups of curious people with his highly edited version, which by the third retelling only barely resembled the truth, and by the tenth was a completely incomprehensible mix of comedy and fairytales.

Alaya was up at her seat on the dais again, but she was more animated than she had been before; chatting with Kori and Arashi and smiling often. He tried his best not to stare, but it was hard. Her smile was really quite pretty when she showed it.

That night he slept on the top bunk in the room he shared with Syaoran and Kurogane. Mokona was curled up on his pillow, and he wondered just how much the creature could sense about his thoughts and feelings.

O-0-O

"Are you sure you have to leave?"

Kori's plaintive voice reminded Fai of everything Alaya had left unsaid the previous morning. He fiddled with the fur-lined collar of his long coat as Syaoran explained how they needed to continue their journey as soon as possible, now that they had found what they came for.

"That's too bad," Rand sighed. "If you wanted to extend your stay a little…" he trailed off seeing the expressions on the four faces of the travelers.

"Where is Alaya?" Kori complained, looking over her shoulder at the door that led out of the great hall and into the living quarters. "She'll miss you leaving."

"I don't think she's coming," Sakura commented softly, drawing the eyes of everyone in the room to her. "Last night she said, 'I'm bad at saying goodbye,' and this morning when I woke up she wasn't there."

"Oh _that's_ a good reason," Rand groused, looking like he was going to go haul her out of whatever hole she had taken refuge in—the aviary, Fai guessed—and shame her into acting like proper nobility. Syaoran just nodded though.

"I guess that's understandable," he remarked, nodding toward the lump in Sakura's cloak that was Mokona.

The white dimension-hopper jumped from Sakura to Syaoran's shoulder, and from there it rose up into the air.

"Mokona Modoki's ready to go!" it exclaimed. "Wahoo!"

Multicolored lights began to shine from it as it grew wings, and the travelers were surrounded in tendrils of magic.

Fai was just contemplating how everyone and their pet bunny seemed to have _feathers_ these days when something odd happened. He was watching Mokona as it flew in a circle around them, but it seemed to be moving much slower than usual. The sound of the rising magic was much quieter than normal too…

"I dreamed about Beth last night."

He didn't need to turn his head to see the speaker who stood a few meters behind him. He knew it was her without looking. But he turned anyway, because he wanted to see her once more before he left. The rebel princess was wearing the dress she had worn several nights ago when she had eaten with them, and the skirt and her long, unbound hair were swirling gently around her in the pseudo-wind created by Mokona's magical activation.

"She told me she would send me on a journey," Alaya announced, her voice so quiet and yet perfectly audible over the muted noises around him. "She says if I travel dimensions on a job for her, I can look for Alphonse." She had been studying the floor near her feet while she spoke, but now she looked up at him, a hopeful little smile on her face. He couldn't help but return it.

"Then let's meet again some time," he suggested, holding out a hand. Her smile widened, and she dashed forward to grasp his hand in both of her own. The magic surrounding him had ceased to be oddly quiet and was making the same sounds as usual as Mokona prepared to swallow them.

"Every world I go to," she cried over the noise, "and every world you land on represent another chance we can see each other! So I won't say goodbye!" Fai chuckled, leaning forward a bit to press his forehead against hers.

"I don't think statistics work quite like that," he remarked lightly, and she pouted for a moment before he spoke again. "Until the day we meet again then, princess." He stood up straight and with his clear blue eyes locked on her lilac ones, he pressed her right hand to his lips in a kiss as light as the touch of a butterfly's wing.

Then the light and sound engulfed him and his companions and they vanished.

"Until the day we meet again, Fai…" she whispered, touching the back of her right hand with her left fingers.

O-0-O

"**So?" Beth looked up from where she had been scanning the fan fiction site for reviews, as though watching the stats on her story could make them come faster or some such nonsense.**

"'**So' what, Rie?" she asked. The doctor sighed.**

"**That **_**can't**_** be the end," she prodded, her eyebrows high on her forehead. "You still haven't explained anything! You haven't told them about your involvement or where Al is, or about **_**THEM**_**, or who That Man really is… You didn't even explain about Aaliyah's name!"**

"**All of that is for the sequel to reveal," Beth announced, exhaling tiredly. **

"**Ugh! Two multi-chapter fics with two sets of lovers separated," Rie muttered. "Do you even know the meaning of 'happily ever after?' How are the readers even going to know when the sequel is posted, if this one's marked as complete?" she exclaimed. Beth waved a hand as if to wave aside her objections.**

"**I'll post the first chapter—actually, the first few chapters more likely—as a part of **_**this**_** fic, so if they're watching this one or if they have it on alerts or something then they'll know as soon as Aaliyah's journey begins; probably next summer. **

**This **_**is**_** an ending of sorts though."**

"**How do you figure **_**that**_** one?" Rie demanded skeptically. Beth shrugged.**

"**As long as they ignore **_**my**_** involvement, this ending explains everything. It's an 'open ending,' certainly, but that can be okay. That way, if anyone doesn't feel like reading my big huge mutant crossover fic of doom, they can stop here and consider the story over."**

**Rie rolled her eyes "Again with the 'happily ever after' comment. **

**What was with your interference at the end though?" the doctor queried. "It was sloppy the way you had the slow-motion and everything went quiet." Beth rubbed the bridge of her nose.**

"**I can give her a little help, can't I?" she protested with a wide grin. "After all, she _is_ my precious daughter…"**

_End of Part the First: Sister of the Wind_

**(Rie glanced at the title that had scrolled across the screen.**

"**Why **_**did**_** you name it **_**Sister of the Wind**_**, anyway?" she inquired. **

**Beth pursed her lips as though deep in thought, and then looked over her shoulder at the doctor with a very serious expression on her face.**

"**I had a reason," she assured the woman. "I had a very reasonable reason."**

"**Really?" Rie asked skeptically, "What would that be?" The young authoress gazed into the eyes of her assistant who was foolish enough to expect a straight answer.**

"**Because I **_**can**_**," she replied with a shrug, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.**

**Rie smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand.)**


End file.
